Practice in Interviews

After finishing activity 3 at the Casino, we were then asked to conduct some interviews to obtain information and opinions about or on a certain area of interest to us. We fed back our results in seminars and with other friends and there seemed to besome sort of disagreement and debate amongst what people believed the atmosphere to be like. So we decided to look into how different people perceive the atmosphere within the casino environment. Ideally we would have liked to interview some more people, that we considered to be 'big gamblers' but we would have had to get permission from the G Casino to go into their premises and interview and this wasn't achievable within the given timescale. So we looked to interview around the doj and amongst students who had been to the casino before. We interviewed 4 people (3 female and 1 male) and did a pilot run on a class mate of ours, to check we were getting along the right lines with our questions.

Our main question was 'How do you feel in a Casino environment?'

Our questions were:

What kind of environment/situations make you nervous?

How do you feel when your spending money?

How much do you usually spend on a night out?

What do you usually spend you money on, on a night out?

Is there anything you feel your addicted to and what?

What are your views on gambling?

What do you participate in that could be considered as gambling, lottery, bingo, scratch cards etc?

Who do you generally go to the casino with, group of friends or alone?

What do you go to the casino for?

We weren't directly asking questions about the Casino at first we were just trying to get some insight into different environments and how they make you feel and how the involvement of money changes it.

The most common environment that people felt nervous in was in in tutorials and presentations in uni, followed by anything formal or unfamiliar. I must admit if I was the one being interviewed I think I would have come up with the same response, which started me off in good stead because I felt that we would have similar ideas and thoughts about the casino.

The views on gambling all seemed quite similar amongst the girls, with it being an easily addictive game and so long as you had enough money to spend then to go for it, but to make sure you know your limit and if its just for some fun on a night out with friends then there is no harm. Compared with the boy his short and sweet response was "go for it!" a very liberal statement. Woman are clearly just more careful with their money and know to keep it for activities such as shopping and eating chocolate! Which they all said they had an addiction to!

Again all the girls said the only thing they consider to be gambling they participate in is the lottery, because it is only £1 a week but apart from that it is occasional nights out to the bingo/casino with friends. Two of the girls said they generally go with their boyfriends and his friends to the casino and one girl in particular said this was because it is a group of guys, which makes her feel safer. This same girl said she also goes with her family because they all gamble and it is taken very seriously, especially with her grandad.

Our final question was 'What do you go to the Casino for?' and 3 out of 4 said for fun, drinks, meal, night out and enjoyment which gave off the impression of them feeling relaxed and at easy within the Casino and the final person said they preferred going to the Casino rather than night clubs because they would rather spend there money on playing than wasting it to get in and for cloakrooms etc, and she says she tries to avoid nightclubs at weekends because she doesn't feel relaxed and is constantly worried about losing people and hates waiting around to be served. This final question for me answered what I was looking for about the atmosphere within the Casino, but only the atmosphere of people who are just looking for a fun night out and nothing too serious and I understand to get a full and wide variety of answers I would need to ask people who go along with the intention to gamble big amounts of money and that take it very serious.

I think that these people would give a totally different response to what I got from my interviews but I think that would be good, because when I was at the Casino myself I seen a divide in atmospheres between the people there for fun and the people there for the money!