Article Review

Ritchie, D. A., (1995). "Conducting the Interview" in Doing Oral History (pp. 57-69). New York: MacMillan.

Three basic tasks of the interviewer when conducting an oral history is to help the interviewee relax, to listen carefully and respectfully to the person being interviewed and encourage the interviewee’s honest reflection of the past.

When preparing for an interview, the interviewer should learn as much background information as possible about the subject. Review of other oral histories is also helpful. For budgeting purposes, the interviewer should plan on ten hours of research for every hour of interview, at least for the subject’s first sitting. Questions should be prepared in advance but the interviewer should also be prepared to deviate from the plan. It is wise to have more questions prepared than the interviewer thinks is necessary.

The interviewer should be prepared for anything as interviewees can cover the gamut from those who answer in monosyllables to those who revel in having an audience and are hard to keep on track or do not want the interview to end.

How questions are ordered depends on the goals of the interview. If the topic is biographical in nature, questions are usually chronological, but if a particular event is the focus, questions will be more topical. Regardless of the purpose of the interview, the interviewer should begin with simple, warm-up questions. Questions should be a combination of specific and open ended. Open ended questions give the interviewee more freedom to choose the direction of the interview, whereas specific questions elicit factual information.

It is important that questions be framed in a neutral manner so as to not “lead” the interviewee. If answers are short, it could be that the question was not open ended enough or that the interviewer was too quick to ask the next question. The interviewer may need to practice silence in order to let the interviewee fully answer.

Comments:

Katie Lee has been interviewed at least three times, plus has written books with stories of her life and her time on the river. I think the primary challenge of interviewing Katie will be to find questions that are unique. Because she is a trained actress, feels comfortable in front of a camera, and has been interviewed numerous times, I’m confident she will not be nervous. I plan to focus on her childhood in Tucson, her Hollywood years and, time permitting, her folk singing.