Interviewing for J387 History's Truths Assignment Fall 2006

Here are some ideas that might help your interview go more smoothly AND get you the information that you need for your paper on History’s Truths.

1. Get ready. Plan on at least two hours for this interview: 30 minutes to get ready, an hour for the interview, and 30 minutes to review your notes and fill in any gaps after you’re done. Use a tape recorder or some other device to record the interview if you can. (E-mail interviews will have a transcript, of course.)

2. Define your purpose. It is important for you to understand the purpose of the interview before you contact your interviewee. It’s a good idea to actually write this down so that you can read it when you contact your interviewee. Smile when you read it!

Example: “My history class is doing a research project to try to find out what ‘real’ people remember about historical events. So I don’t have a whole lot of prepared questions for you to answer—I just basically want to listen to the answer to this one: Is there one historical event that really made an impression on you when it happened? One that may have changed your life? I’d love to hear all you can remember!”

3. Be ready to listen. This means you should plan on being very very patient. You are asking your interviewee to tell you a story, and that story may meander a bit. Don’t talk unless you have to! But ….

4. Keep the interview on track and focused.

Although your main purpose is to listen (not just hear or record the interview, but to LISTEN) to the story, you may have to help the conversation along a little bit.

For example, your interviewee may suggest a couple of events before hitting on one that will work for your assignment. As you recall, the event needs to have occurred before you were born (unless you are 30 or older yourself, then at least 30 years ago) and it needs to be of enough significance that you are confident it was covered in the newspapers and magazines at the time.

There are some “events” that will be too big: WWII, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, or anything else that lasted more than a month or so. If your interviewee selects the Vietnam War, for example, ask a few more questions to help narrow it to a specific event or a specific time period (the Tet offensive, or the My Lai Massacre, or the killings at Kent State). The event may be something very happy, too, such as a royal wedding or the landing on the moon!

After you’ve settled on an event, some of these “helper” questions might come in handy:

“Can you tell me more about that?”

“How did this all affect your very own family?”

“How did your neighbors and friends react to the news?”

“It’s amazing that you remember this so well.”

“That must have been scary/exciting/thrilling?”

“Is this something you talk about very often?”

5. Make sure you include “communication” in your history interview. That is, ask what your interviewee remembers about radio, newspaper and television coverage of the event. Find out all you can about how your interviewee heard the news of the event and what kinds of news stories were broadcast or published. Try to pin down the exact dates. You might find they don’t remember the news coverage at all—or that they remember very clearly exactly where they were and even what they were doing. Ask about the news coverage in the weeks and months after the event, too.

6. Keep your comments short!

“I didn’t know that before!”

“That’s really interesting.”

“What did you make of that?”

“Really!”

“Wow.”

 7. The absolute key to successful interviewing is genuine interest. We’re not trying to test people on what they know or don't know, we’re trying to find out about different kinds of historical memories and how we should value as well as evaluate them. There are no “right” answers, and your research will be the most fun if you allow it to take you places you never thought you would go!