One Month Prior
Learn and Practice the Art of Interviewing
There are three dimensions to an oral history interview: active listening, good questions, and high quality recording. There is an art to doing all three of these things well at the same time. If this is your first experience doing oral history, we recommend that you do the following practice exercises and critique your work before you attempt to record a formal interview for your project.
- Active Listening: Good interviewing is all about "active" listening. In your daily life you hear many things: the radio as you commute to work, conversations among people in your vicinity, family members recounting their experiences at mealtime, yourself as you talk with an old friend over the phone. But hearing is not the same as listening, and many oral historians will tell you that listening is a lost art. Listening involves focused interest in the thoughts and words of another person. The interviewer's sole purpose is to elicit an extended response from the interviewee and to ask good follow-up questions so that the interviewee has a chance to elaborate on the topic as appropriate. Most of the talking should be done by the interviewee, so beware of talking too much. This exercise will help you hone your active listening skills:
- Find a family member or friend who is willing to help you practice your listening skills.
- Pick a topic that you know your interviewee could talk about with ease.
- Take a small notebook and pen or pencil with you to the interview.
- Find a quiet, comfortable place for the two of you to do the interview.
- Before beginning, chat with your interviewee a bit so that both of you are put at ease. After the preliminary warm-up talk, ask an open-ended question to elicit a story. An open-ended question is one that cannot be answered with a "yes" or a "no." For example, "Were you pleased with the outcome of that project?" is a closed question and "What do you think were the strengths and weaknesses of that project?" is an open question.
- Listen to your interviewee. Use your facial expressions and nod your head as appropriate to indicate that you are interested, but do not interject or interrupt. Remember that when an interview is recorded, it will pick up all of your "um-hums," so you need to learn how to communicate your interest nonverbally.
- If you ask a question and don't get an immediate response, give it some time. Oral historians refer to these pauses as "wait time." Many people need time to collect their thoughts, and you don't want to jump in with another question just at the time that your interviewee is ready to talk.
- Maintain eye contact, but also take brief notes to remind yourself of follow-up questions you want to ask and areas that you want to pursue in more depth.
- Even though your "real" interviews will be considerably longer, the practice interview doesn't need to be more than 10-15 minutes in length -- you will be surprised how much you can learn about the process and art of interviewing in that time.
- After the interview, debrief with your partner. What seemed to go well? What was awkward about the experience? What do you think you could have done better? How does your partner's perception of the experience differ from your own?
- The Recorded Interview: Now that you've practiced active listening, you're ready to add recording into the mix. In recent years, recording equipment has become increasingly inexpensive and easy to use. But many oral history interviews suffer from poor quality. Fortunately, most mistakes are easy to avoid. This exercise will help you learn the basics of effective audio recording:
- Select the recording equipment that you intend to use for the interview and practice with it beforehand. You may want to do some background research to inform your selection of equipment. The Vermont Folklife Center (VFC) provides excellent tutorials on digital recording equipment. If you have little prior experience with recording technologies, read the VFC tutorials before determining the technology that you will use during your interview.
- If possible, use the same equipment that you will use during your "real" oral history interview. Before the practice interview, read the Recording Tip Sheet and use it as you practice with your equipment.
- Find a friend or family member who is willing to serve as a practice interviewee.
- Select a quiet setting for the interview.
- After preliminary warm-up talk with your interviewee, turn on the recorder, state your name, ask the interviewee to state and spell her name, and ask her to indicate verbally that she grants you permission to use the recording for the purposes of your project. NOTE: this recorded information is important because written consent forms and labels can become lost or damaged over time. If the interviewee's information and consent are recorded directly on the tape, future generations will know who is doing the interviewing, who is being recorded, and be assured that the interviewee consented to the recording.
- Using the techniques you learned during the "active listening" practice exercise, record a second interview.
- After the interview, play the recording back several times to critique your work. Each time focus on a different dimension of the interview: audio quality, effectiveness of the questions and follow-up questions, your adeptness with silent active listening and "wait time." If the interviewee is willing, listen to the interview together and talk about its strengths and areas for improvement.
- The Recorded Interview with an Interview Guide: During the previous two interviews the topic and questions were open-ended. Oral history interviews are usually guided by a set of questions that is often referred to as an "interview schedule" or "interview guide." It's important to use these questions to guide the interview, not as a check-off list in which all questions must be asked and answered in exact order. This exercise will help you juggle the three dimensions of interviewing -- active listening, recording, and guided questioning:
- Prepare for a third practice interview, using the things that you learned during your two previous active listening and recorded practice interviews.
- Familiarize yourself with SLA recommendations outlined in Suggestions for Making the Call (how to approach prospective interviewees for the project). Familiarize yourself with the SLA Release Form that will need to be completed by all interviewees and interviewers.
- Familiarize yourself with questions in the SLA Recommended Interview Questions. Some of these questions are general and would be relevant to any interview with an adult. Select 8-10 of the more general SLA Interview questions for use in your third interview. This will be your "interview guide." Write the questions down and learn them by heart. You don't want to be focusing on your list of questions during the interview!
- Find a friend or family member who is willing to serve as a practice interviewee. If possible, use the tips recommended in Suggestions for Making the Call so that you also practice the steps involved in arranging for an interview.
- Before the interview, work with your practice interviewee to complete the SLA Release Form. This will give you an opportunity to practice answering any questions the interviewee might have about the release paperwork.
- After preliminary warm-up talk with your interviewee, turn on the recorder, state your name, ask the interviewee to state and spell her name, and ask her to indicate verbally that she grants you permission to use the recording for the purposes of your project. Remember, this recorded information is important because written consent forms and labels can become lost or damaged over time.
- Record an interview that is guided by your selected questions. Have the questions on hand, but focus on the interviewee. Every now and then, glance down at the questions to make sure you've covered all the desired topics. Interviewees often address more than one question in a single answer, so you don't want to follow your list so rigidly that you ask a question that has already been answered! Ask simple follow-up questions to elicit in-depth responses: how so, in what way, what did you think about that, how did that feel, why, for example, etc.
- After the interview, play the recording back to critique your work. Focus on your questioning skills. Which questions flowed seamlessly as an extension of the previous discussion? Which questions seemed jarring or appeared to interrupt the thought process of the interviewee? What opportunities for follow-up questions slipped by you, and what follow-up questions are you glad that you asked?
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