interview

Interview test run

Miss W. Family History Course , ,

Because I haven’t been able to organize a time to meet Glenn yet, I thought I had better do a test run of an interview with my father. I went through Paul Thompson’s questions, typed out a big long list of them chunked into areas like early family life, schooling, early adult life etc.

Before starting the interview I showed my dad the questions and said I would be asking about some of these things. I think that helped him know the sorts of things I wanted to get from the interview. It allowed him to chat for a while on a topic rather than giving just short, stilted answers.

To record the interview I took my iPad to mum and dad’s house and we sat in the dining/kitchen area while mum was in the lounge room watching the cricket and Sydney/Hobart yacht race. I had downloaded the app Soundcloud, which allows 180 minutes with their free version.

I recorded in two sections: first dad talked about his own life mentioning he had already written about a lot of these and they were on his computer if ever i needed them. The second and shorter section was dad talking about his parents and grandparents.

Here are the two recordings:

 

Interview questions

Miss W. Family History Course, Smith , ,

Pushfit cube question mark
Creative Commons License Photo Credit: Leo Reynolds via Compfight

As part of the discussions on the family history course, we have to work out six questions we will be asking at our interview. We also have to mention why we think these will be helpful to our research and what did we think of  Thompson‘s suggestions.

Last night I read through the summary of the chapter by Thompson about interviewing and the types of questions that will get lots of information from your interviewee. It is similar to what we did in teaching; the how and why questions are better than just who, what, where and when. The last four will give facts but the why and how will give reasons.

So this is what I wrote in my discussion area:

I am going to hopefully interview a SMITH cousin who lives at Oyster Cove, Tasmania. His father is my grandmother’s youngest brother (I think).

So other than the basic when and where born etc, I want to add more information to the tree about social life and family life.

So here are my questions:

1. Where did you live as a child and who were your most common visitors?

2. Where did you go on holidays and was it with/to family?

Now questions about his father:

3. What do you know about your dad’s life as a child? Who did he live with and where?

4. Who were the people your dad often talked about? Were they relatives, friends or working buddies?

Now questions about his paternal grandparents:

5. Did your dad ever talk about his parents? What did he tell you about them?

6. What have you found out about your grandparents during your research? Where did you find out that information?

I know that Glenn and his wife are also researching the SMITH side of the tree so will be great to join our knowledge and add it to my blog here.

Now that I look at the questions, none are why or how at the beginning. But I think asking these questions will still gather more information to add to my tree and perhaps lead to more research areas in future.

The Thompson summary was great in that it asked questions in chunks – firstly the interviewee him/herself then progressing to parents and grandparents. Also dividing again into smaller chunks like early childhood, schooling, life at home, marriage, children.

To my readers: Are there any other questions you think I should be asking Glenn that could add to my family tree? Here is a link to what I know so far.

STOP PRESS  UPDATE

I just did a google search about “Voice of the past: Oral History” and came up with an Oral History society in Australia with lots of resources.

Getting ready for interview

Miss W. Family History Course ,
Mum, myself and Aunty Marg

Just spent a great hour or so listening to a series of video recordings about how to organize, structure and run an interview. Here are my notes.

Preparing for interview

  • Make them comfortable – their favourite place – kitchen table etc
  • Try to have microphone etc as not noticeable
  • Time of day that works for them – mind is agile rather than after meal or relaxing time

Structuring interview

  • Start interview with a questionnaire by Paul Thompson*
  • Begin with their childhood then progress to parents and grandparents – reminisces lead to more things they remembered
  • Listen to what is being said as more clues will be given to allow further research using other resources

Interviewing techniques

  • Be attentive, listen carefully to ask more questions for clarification
  • Not too long
  • Importance of listening to interview – identify new questions for next interview
  • Bring copies of newspaper etc to next interview re event discussed
  • Use photographs for more info

Life as a narrative

  • As we get older our life becomes a story
  • Allow people to tell own story in own time
  • Ask questions at later interviews – get these from early interviews
  • These questions important to you not necessarily the person you are interviewing
  • Patient, respectful and alert when asking about traumatic incidents

Oral history as part of family history research

  • This began mainly in the 1970s
  • This may not be history – people’s memories might include imagination as well
  • Documents vs oral history
  • Everything is an interpretation of the past
  • Use photographs to jog memory then find newspapers, documents etc for further comparison
  • Oral history important part of some cultures like Torres Strait Islanders and aborigines

*Paul Thompson, The Voice of the Past: Oral History, Oxford University Press, 2000.

Reflection: I hadn’t really thought about all the points mentioned in these recordings. I generally just go in like a bull at a gate asking questions and not developing a structure for the interview. But really mine are often related to a photo my aunt or mother has shown me and so is not an organized interview at all, just a chit chat about a photo.

Question: What is going to be the hardest part of the interview process?