Oral History Interviewing

Website:

Guidelines on constructing a project and conducting interviews: http://www.umsl.edu/~wolfordj/courses/a291/oh-procedures-A291.html

5th WEEK'S DISCUSSION:

Donald A. Ritchie, "Starting an oral history project," in Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995): 23-26.

• Where does an oral history project begin? (23)
• What kind of goals should an oral history project set? (23-25)
• Should a project set a goal of how many people to interview? (25)
• Is there an optimal number of hours for interviewing each person? (25-26)

Donald A. Ritchie, "Equipment," in Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995): 34-40.

• What basic equipment is needed for an oral history project? (34-35)
• What type of tape lasts the longest? (36)
• What sort of documentation should be kept on each interview? (36-37)
• Where should interviews take place? (37)
• What happens if the equipment fails? (37)
• Is it ever appropriate to interview a group of people together? (38-39)
• Can a team of interviewers conduct an interview together? (39)
• What are the differences in recording events that are still taking place and recording those that are long past? (39-40)

Donald A. Ritchie, "Legal Concerns," in Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995): 51-56.

• Journalists do not use legal release forms for their interviews; why should oral historians? (51-52)
• Must the interviewer also sign a deed of gift? (52)
• Do interviewees have the right to close their interviews for a long time? (52-53)
• What rights do the interviewees have to publish their own interviews? (53)
• What if someone demands that the tapes and transcripts be returned? (54)
• Can something said in an oral history ever be considered libelous or defamatory? (54)
• What should be done with the finished interviews? (54-55)
• How do you let people know where to find your projects' oral histories? (55-56)

The Oral History Association, "Principles and Standards of the Oral History Association," in Donald A. Ritchie, Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995): 207-209.

• Three basic sections
• Responsibility to interviewees
• Responsibility to the Public and to the Profession
• Responsibility of Sponsoring and Archiving Institutions

• Read these, know these, and abide by these principles and standards

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Donald A. Ritchie, "Conducting Interviews," in Doing Oral History (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1995): 57-83.

• What qualities make a good interviewer? (57)

PREPARING FOR THE INTERVIEW (58-61)

• How should an interviewer get ready for an interview? (58)

• Is so much research really necessary? (59)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How many questions should be prepared for each interview? (59-60)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How many times should ne person be interviewed? (60-61)

• How long should an average interview last? (61)

SETTING UP THE INTERVIEW (62-64)

• Who should be interviewed first? (62)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How do you locate potential interviewees? (62-63)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• What is the best way to initiate contact with interviewees? (63-64)

CONDUCTING THE INTERVIEW (65-81)

Where should you position the tape recorder? (65)

• What if the tape runs out while the interviewee is speaking? (66)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Should questions be arranged chronologically or topically? (66)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Are open-ended questions preferable to specific questions? (66-68)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Can the framing of questions distort the answer? (68)

• What if the answers are perfunctory? (68-69)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How should you deal with an uncooperative interviewee? (69-70)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How personal should an interviewer get? (70)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How should you bring up questions that may be embarrassing? (70-72)

• What if the interviewee asks that the recorder be turned off? (72)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How can interviewers get beyond stories that have been "rehearsed" through frequent storytelling? (72-73)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How can an interviewer assist an interviewee's ability to recall? (73-74)

• Do differences in race, gender and age between an interviewer and interviewee make any difference in the interview? (74-75)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Are there any differences in interviewing the famous and interviewing average individuals? (75-76)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Is there more advantage to being an "insider" or an "outsider" as an interviewer? (76)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Should interviewers use a questionnaire? (76-77)

• Can follow-up questions be used in advance? (77-78)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• How should interviewers react to statements with which they strongly disagree? (78)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• But what if the interviewer suspects that the interviewee is lying or shading the truth? (78-79)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Should an interviewer pay any attention to the interviewee's "body language"? (79-80)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Is there a role in oral history for what social scientists call "continuing observation"? (80-81)

CONCLUDING THE INTERVIEW (82-83)

What's the best way to conclude an interview? (82)

 
 
 
 
 
 
• Should interviewees ever be paid for their interviews? (83)

RETURN TO TOP

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Kathryn Anderson and Dana C. Jack, " Learning to listen: interview techniques and analysis."  In Perks et al, The oral history reader.  London: Routledge, 1998: 157-171.

Introduction

• focus on women's stories

• oh offers a unique opportunity to examine women's lives and the way they are expressed

• in order to extract the woman's story:

• we must push narrators to talk about subjects outside of the comfort zone
• we must let them tell their stories, not make them tell what we want to hear

• Discusses how interviews typically leave out feelings, emotions

• and thus leave out people's self-conceptions, self-consciousness
• thus people are not being fully honest, fully disclosing

• interviewers typically are more focused on documenting the "patterns" of history and culture

• but by doing so they leave out the internal lives of people that create the substance of those patterns

• the internal feelings provide the meaning within the narrative

• Constraints of the interviewer

• our focus on the objective rather than the subjective

• this can be malproductive, because we do not delve into the causes, the motives, of actions and thought

• our common culture constrains us in interviewing through our adherence to learned social norms of proper behavior, such as:

• don't pry: avoid sensitive issues
• don't question or contradict your elders
• seem as if you accept people at face value, even when you know there is a hidden agenda

• interviewing is very much therapy as much as documentation

• w/o the therapeutic aspect, people's narratives will not be honest or reliable—they will only be partial

• this is not to say that we should be therapists while interviewing

• we are not qualified

• rather, we are to explore the nuances of emotion and subjectivity in order for narrators to fully disclose what they feel and what they want to say

• ask about feelings when they arise

• allow pauses to last, so narrators can fill out the thought/feeling

• ask why there was a pause after a statement

• ask why there was an emphasis on a particular relationship in the narrative

• need to hear what people imply, suggest, or start to say, and ask about them

• etc.

• we need to question whether the interview format allows for the open discussion of subjective feelings

Interview analyses: listening for meaning (Jack)

• author was originally trained in counseling, therapy

• her approach is predicated on this background

• suggests different approaches to interviewing that allows the interviewer to operate outside of the theoretical paradigms

• remember: the researcher is an active participant in the interview
• critical areas that require attention are those where the interviewer thinks s/he knows the answer—
• always ask what the person means; always ask what a word means
• literary critics: the "presence of the absence"

• most important step: "to immerse ourselves in the interview, to understand the person's story from her vantage point." (165)

• Three ways of listening:

• 1. LISTEN TO THE PERSON'S MORAL LANGUAGE

• how she says things, the meanings of the words she uses, imply a value-laden worldview that explains, that places meanings into, her actions and behavior and beliefs

• "I'm a liar, a cheat, I'm no good."
• "I feel like I'm a failure."

• moral self-evaluative statements allow the narrator "to examine the relationship between self-concept and cultural norms, between what we value and what others value, between how we are told to act and how we feel about ourselves when we do or do not act that way." (166)

• allows interviewer to observe what values narrator is striving toward

• the researcher's role: to preserve the structure of freedom within the interview so the narrator can strive toward this self-expression

• 2. ATTEND TO THE SUBJECT'S METASTATEMENTS

• places n the interview where the subject stops and restates a thought, or makes a comment on a statement
• suggest "the individual's awareness of a discrepancy within the self—or between what is expected and what is being said." (168)

• 3. ATTEND TO THE LOGIC OF THE NARRATIVE

notice "the internal consistency or contradictions in the person's statements about recurring themes and the way these themes relate to each other." (168)

Conclusion

• oral history interview should focus more on process than on fact-gathering

• "from information gathering, where the focus is on the right questions, to interactions, where the focus is on process, on the dynamic unfolding of the subject's viewpoint."  (169)

RETURN TO TOP

Sidney Mintz, "The anthropological interview and the life history."  In Dunaway et al, Oral history: an interdisciplinary reader, 2nd edition.  Walnut Creek [CA]: Altamira Press, 1998: 298-305.

Anthropologists and historians differ in their objectives in conducting interviews

• anthropology:

• structure and patterns of society

• how the individual expresses or internalizes those structure and patterns

• what worldview, cultural traits, and traditions express

• how narrator functions as culture-bearer

• tends to focus on life history
 

• history


• documenting history from on-site witnesses

• tends to focus on events or themes within specific, limited time-frames

• The ethnographic interview, the ethnographic process


• ideally, should cover many narrators

• ideally, should be contextual—the interviewer should know the culture and society

• the ethnographer should understand how others view the narrator

• the ethnographer needs to distinguish between:
 

• personal (idiosyncratic) expressions and cultural (normative) expressions
• the distinctions will allow for interpretation

• Assumption:
• the narrator incarnates the culture in some way, great or small
• "people are at once products and producers of the social and cultural systems within which they are lodged" (302)

• Givens:


• the ethnographer is part and parcel of the interview: s/he both affects [has a formative and emotional impact on] and effects [helps to cause] it

• the single narrator provides a clue as to what is typical of the society
 

• every narrator is a member of society
• and thus, is a filter of and microcosm of that society
• however, it does not follow that the narrator is typical of the society, or representative


• it does then follow that the ethnographer needs to:
 

• document the external life of the narrator
• document the relationship between narrator and ethnographer
 
• ethnography is a "unique type of natural history" (302)