Preparation of Life History Interviews

5) Using a tape recorder, video or notes

I am a very strong believer in the tape recorder for the reason that I think if you do not use a tape recorder, you are constantly breaking eye contact, and if you have worked hard to establish intimacy and trust, this puts you back to the starting point each time.

This does not, however, mean I only use the tape recorder. I also jot down notes as the interview proceeds. For instance, when bigger ideas begin to emerge, it is important to note them down, for they may not come back to you when you do the subsequent transcriptions. So I tend to keep a few quick notes about big ideas as they emerge, and return to them immediately after the interview and fill out my reflections. The negotiation around the use and location of the tape recorder is itself a further part of the process of building up intimacy and trust and setting a personalised scene for the interview to take place.

Video adds new dimensions – showing so many other responses. But it can be more intrusive and there is the problem of a wider range of data that can make analysis more complex. Sometimes the image can tell more than the discourse.

6) Transcription

It is very important to think hard about who does the transcription at the interview. A common procedure is to put out transcription to a research assistant or secretarial assistant. In general, I would argue this is a bad move. My own experience is that doing the transcription oneself and doing it fairly quickly after the interview, recreates the scene of the interview very adequately and causes a flow of complimentary ideas to come up as you transcribe. It is another way of following up the initial process noted above of reflecting on ideas as they emerge, but I find transcription itself is an important ‘trigger’ to note emergent themes.

7) Describing the scene

Often when interview material is presented in reports, the scene of the interview is not fully described. It is important, to fully describe the situation for instance that while the interview is being conducted, you were, sitting in front of a picture, and at this stage in the afternoon. So you have to allow the reader the opportunity to imagine the setting. Recreate the scene of the two people looking at the picture, then the reader has a sense of how the interview was conducted and the data generated. This is imperative in life history work because this full contextual picture is part of the textual material being presented.

Situations can radically change the kind of data generated that is why they must be considered carefully and fully described. William Labov has talked about the crucial effect of the setting in his work on appraising the socio-linguisticability of African-American students. He described how one interview conducted by a white interviewer sitting behind a desk evoked a response that seemed to indicate low linguistic facility on the part of the student. On the next occasion the setting was completely changed, the interviewer sat on the beanbags along with the student who had brought a friend along. The group sat eating potato chips and in the subsequent conversations the student seemed to display high linguistic facility.