English 104-67 and 104-75

Spring 2012

Generating Primary Research:

Personal Interview

Interview Notes due Thursday, January 26.

First Essay Draft due Tuesday, January 31.

Conferences: Individually scheduled.

Final Essay due Thursday, February 9 (posted to Blackboard by midnight)

Your interview paper will ultimately consist of four parts in a two-pocket folder:

1. Your interview questions and notes (or transcripts)

2. Interview release forms

3. Drafts

4. The Interview Essay (4-6 pages)

The Goals

1. To write an essay that accurately represents your informant(s) and the conversation(s) you had with them. This essay is NOT to be written in a question/answer format.

2. To include your own reflections and insights on the data your informant provided (Yes, you can use “I”).

3. To indicate in your closing paragraph what direction further research might take, in terms of a topic and potential research question.

The Process

1. Prepare Interview Questions

Decide who your informant(s) will be and think about what kind of information and perspectives they can reasonably be expected to provide, given: a) their role in the culture or group, b) their expertise and authority in the topic you are researching, and c) your own relationship with them.
Get their permission to be interviewed. Schedule time with them ASAP and be considerate of their time constraints.
Decide what tentative speculations or major questions you have for your informant.
Do some informal research on the topic you plan to discuss so that you can ask intelligent questions and demonstrate genuine interest.

2. Conduct Interview

Carefully record their responses in the language they use as fully as possible.
Be sure to have your informant sign the consent form.
Expect to spend 2-4 hours actively interviewing, depending on how many informants you have. You should plan to conduct a follow-up interview to check out the hunches you develop from reading your interview notes.

3. Conduct Follow-up Interview

If your interview is unsuccessful, or if your informant is unavailable for a follow-up interview, then you will choose a second informant to interview instead of conducting a follow-up interview.
If you wish, you can plan to interview two informants for your project. Avoid more than two because that could dilute your findings if you do not have time to do a thorough job.

4. Write a Reflective Interview Essay addressing some or all of the following:

· What intrigued you, surprised you, or disturbed you?

· What views seemed to confirm and/or contradict your initial speculations?

· What do you notice about power relations within the interview?

· What do you notice about the language choices your informant uses?

· What new insights seem to emerge from your interview data?

· What concepts or ideas from our readings or class discussions can help you to detect patterns in the perspectives from your informant?

Suggestion for How to Organize the Interview Essay:

· Introduction and brief summary of what you learned.

· Thesis indicating the insights your essay will describe and how they compare to your initial opinions and speculations.

· Examples from your interview data, quoted and/or paraphrased, that support and develop your main claims.

· Tentative conclusions along with remaining questions for potential future research.

How to Cite in MLA:

If you were to interview me in person on January 15, 2012, the interview would be cited as follows:

Work Cited

Evans, Tess. Personal Interview. 15 Jan. 2012.

If you interview by some other means, then replace “Personal Interview” with that other means, such as “Email Interview."

Remember, each interview is a separate source:

Works Cited