Interviews. We started class by talking about interviewing by thinking about the different kinds of interviews (genres) that are out there in our culture. You identified job interviews, news interviews, political and celebrity interviews, man-on-the street interviews, oral history interviews, and research interviews. Each of these different interviews have a characteristic audience, purpose and form, and they set up questions for different "subjects."= the individuals who are interviewed.
Oral history. Jaylecia brought up oral history in terms of its role in redefining the stories we use to "create" or tell the story of what history is. Oral histories generally focus on a particular life within a particular historical period or as related to a significant historical event; they may also present a life review that only incidentally connects to larger cultural happenings. Oral histories are often collected through interviews and recorded through audio or video recordings. The term "oral history" is also used to refer to the written, analytic essays that discuss the interview materials collected from oral history subjects.
Overall structure for an interview. Next we talked about how to plan the conversation for an oral history interview. I suggested that you think about the interview in parts. The first part serves as an orientation where you and the subject get to know (and hopefully feel comfortable with) eachother. This talk should provide background information the subject will need to understand how to answer your questions (your goals for the interview - if you have any, information about you) - and it should go through some of the easy to answer, demographic and background kinds of questions so the subject can get warmed up. It should also preview or introduce the kinds of questions you will be asking, so the subject has some time for his/her stories to "gather" in the back of his/her mind. During the middle of your interview, you should cycle through questions (often in roughly chronological order) about the experiences at the center of your research. Ask open questions (questions that can't be answered with yes or no, and that don't put the subject on the spot). "Tell me about. . ." or "What was it like when . . ." or "Describe . . ." or "Tell me a story about . . ." are good lead-ins. Remember interviews are conversations - so follow up and add to your opening questions. As you come the the last part of the interview, begin some reflecting and pulling together. Make connections, ask for feelings and reflections.
911 interviews. After a short time where you developed a list of questions (an interview protocol), and after a talk about how to take notes on your interview, you worked in pairs to conduct oral history interviews about experiences on 911. One of you was the interviewer, one of you was the subject - and BOTH of you took notes. I stopped you several times and prompted you to catch up with your note taking. You tried to take note of what was said by both the subject and the interviewer, the timing and sequence of the unfolding information, how the speakers interacted, and descriptions of "what happened" as the interview progressed. You were instructed to write down as much as you could as you were talking, and you were given several spaces of time during and after the interview to add your "head notes" (what you remembered) to your notes.
Oral history. Jaylecia brought up oral history in terms of its role in redefining the stories we use to "create" or tell the story of what history is. Oral histories generally focus on a particular life within a particular historical period or as related to a significant historical event; they may also present a life review that only incidentally connects to larger cultural happenings. Oral histories are often collected through interviews and recorded through audio or video recordings. The term "oral history" is also used to refer to the written, analytic essays that discuss the interview materials collected from oral history subjects.
Overall structure for an interview. Next we talked about how to plan the conversation for an oral history interview. I suggested that you think about the interview in parts. The first part serves as an orientation where you and the subject get to know (and hopefully feel comfortable with) eachother. This talk should provide background information the subject will need to understand how to answer your questions (your goals for the interview - if you have any, information about you) - and it should go through some of the easy to answer, demographic and background kinds of questions so the subject can get warmed up. It should also preview or introduce the kinds of questions you will be asking, so the subject has some time for his/her stories to "gather" in the back of his/her mind. During the middle of your interview, you should cycle through questions (often in roughly chronological order) about the experiences at the center of your research. Ask open questions (questions that can't be answered with yes or no, and that don't put the subject on the spot). "Tell me about. . ." or "What was it like when . . ." or "Describe . . ." or "Tell me a story about . . ." are good lead-ins. Remember interviews are conversations - so follow up and add to your opening questions. As you come the the last part of the interview, begin some reflecting and pulling together. Make connections, ask for feelings and reflections.
911 interviews. After a short time where you developed a list of questions (an interview protocol), and after a talk about how to take notes on your interview, you worked in pairs to conduct oral history interviews about experiences on 911. One of you was the interviewer, one of you was the subject - and BOTH of you took notes. I stopped you several times and prompted you to catch up with your note taking. You tried to take note of what was said by both the subject and the interviewer, the timing and sequence of the unfolding information, how the speakers interacted, and descriptions of "what happened" as the interview progressed. You were instructed to write down as much as you could as you were talking, and you were given several spaces of time during and after the interview to add your "head notes" (what you remembered) to your notes.
All of these notes taken together should be posted on your blog. IN ADDITION - Blog 3 should include (at the end, or added to the main post in a different color font) any other stories, observations, "quotes" conversations that you remembered as you thought back on the interview.
Reflecting on 911 interviews. In talk after the interviews were completed, Dee/Arlene observed that she thought there might be connections between how old individuals were, the way they got information about the event, and how they remembered the experience. Antoinette/Brian reported reflected on how Antoinette considered not sharing - but then did - her feelings of anger and blame. Most of you had some conversations surrounding to/associated with those feelings. Christine/Jaylecia mentioned being "changed", Joe/Tempie/Stephane noted how different groups felt about the event (Tempie reported the "celebrating" at her school and observed her reaction to that). We also noted that the richness of your interviews - particularly the details of your stories - were difficult to capture in your notes. Feel free to ADD TO your in-class notes with what you remember of the stories that were told when you post your data.
Analyzing interview data. We began by reviewing the steps in the interview process.
1. Coding: identify/name the features of your data. For our interview data, some of the "features" or classifications you might note include:
- questions + answers. Identifying talk as either a question or answer can help answer questions about who is directing the interview (authority), the participants' investment or engagement with the process (hypothesis = if subjects ask more questions they are more engaged?), what kinds of information can be communicated through questions versus statements = and so on.
- speaker's distance or emotional connection to what s/he is saying. noting/naming connection or the speaker's relationship to what s/he is saying can help answer questions about what is important in an interview
- changes in attitude, perspective, or emotion
- statements of "fact" and statements where the speaker interprets/responsd to fact
- stories + parts of stories (introduction, presentation of problem, resolution of the problem, conclusion)
- resolution (or lack of resolution) to stories: stories might have positive or negative or unresolved endings.
- the storyteller's language choices (are there any repeated phrases or words that signal characteristic feelings or ideas?)
I realize the notes we took will not have sufficient detail to provide solid data for most of these classifications - but that is OK. This gives you a simplified, first opportunity to look at data and figure out how to name what you see.
2. Classifying: place the different examples of questions and answers (or some other name/code) into groups. Look for similarities and differences in your codes (as we looked for similarities and differences in the different kinds of interviews at the beginning of class).
3. Identifying patterns. As we talked through Brian's data, we identified a small pattern in how he represented Antoinette's stories about her reaction to the first information she received about 911. We noted the sequence. Teacher told her, she didn't believe it, she looked it up and believed it, she applied what happened to her self/her own situation (became worried). This is a basic story form. We do not really have enough stories from Antionette to see if that is a usual pattern for telling stories (1. presentation of information, 2. her evaluation of the information, 3. generalization/reflection on what the information) but that is one possible pattern we might look for.
4. Developing hypotheses about what the patterns mean or how they fit together. A hypotheses is a "guess" about what a pattern means or how it relates to other patterns. You might look at several of the data sets posted on your classmates' blogs to see if a pattern you find in one data set is the same or different in another data set. Dee's idea about the age of individuals during 911 affecting their experiences is a hypothesis. Coding stories by individuals who are different ages and comparing the elements and patterns in those stories might allow you to state HOW age affected those experiences.
5. Testing the hypotheses. Continuing #4, after you had some hypotheses about how age shaped indiviudals' experiences of 911 = you would test them by looking at more data (more of your classmates notes) to see if your hypotheses "fit"
6. Creating a "theoretical story" that explains or accounts for the features of the interview you are interested in. After you find some hypotheses that fit - put several together to see if you can develop an explanation. Continuing Dee's hypothesis about age and experience - you might have a theory about how adults protected children because children were more vulnerable to the "scary" elements of the event. The data might show that children who were "protected" remembered less, or it might show that children who were protected became suspicious (and more afraid). Or you might develop a theory based on the idea that very young children simply can't understand some events because they don't have enough experience - so they don't "remember" 911 because the couldn't take it in. . . or . . . whatever the data show. Your theory will be focused on one particular idea or question about 911, what people remember, how they feel about the vent, whether the memories are "resolved or unresolved" - or anything else that you see in the data and that interests you.
Sample data with some beginning coding (example from class)
What follows is a very limited example of one way to start marking up the data posted on your classmates' blogs. You can not do this in 5 minutes. Good coding, categorizing and theorizing comes out of spending lots of time looking at and thinking about your data. Have fun with this. You will be amazed at what you can discover.
(Thanks Brian and Antoinette for the sample data, for the orignial data, see Brian's blog. This is a marked up section of one story from Brian's data.)
Questions: Where were you during 9/11
Answer: In a kindergarten class sets scene and one of the teachers came in and informed her about one of the planes flew into the tower change in attitude response to fact and she did not believe her until she looked up online and on the TVchange of attitude and then she started to panic about another planes coming and hitting one of the schools and she thought about her children and the principle told them to keep on going in the classroomFACTand parents started to pick up their children FACTand some of them were involved with 911 FACTand they could not get in contact with family members along with some fellow teachers and the principle allowed them to leave but they were instructed to attempt to keep the day as regular as possibleFACT but she did not have half of the kids in the classroom
What to do for next class.
Post Blog 3: Post your notes to your 911 interview. Post the original notes you took in class. Then - in a different color font or in an added section - add any additional stories, impressions, descriptions to fill out your data.
Post Blog 4: Set up an
analysis of for Data Set 1 (your classmates' notes on the 911 interviews posted on their blogs). Use the review of analysis presented in this post to help you dentify the features/themes within the interview
that you will focus on. Your blog post should include:
a list of codes (names) for the important features you see in the data
categories for your codes
some patterns you notice among the codes and categories
some hypotheses to account for the patterns
a theory about what your data "show"
Read: Sample literacy narratives 1, 2 & 3.
What we dill do during next class.
We will begin by talking about your posts for Blog 4. We will talk about your "findings" and you should be prepared to point out the places where you got stuck or that were unclear or hard => so I can focus the class on giving you support for those parts of analysis.
After discussing Data set 1 (the 911 interviews) we will work on analyzing the Literacy narratives and the shaggy dog stories - I haven't decided which order we will take on these projects yet. It will depend on what I see on your blogs over the next week.
Have a good weekend. Thanks for the great class.
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