Interviewing Skills

Do
· Be a good and interested listener

· Follow your interviewee’s train of thought

· Stick to a fruitful area and follow it through while the memories are flowing

· Be sensitive to your interviewee’s feelings, values and needs

· Be aware of your own biases and prejudices

· Be patient

· Use sensitive ‘open ended’ and ‘follow up’ questions as often as possible

· Be alert to touchy subjects and don’t just blunder in

· Be empathetic

· Provide emotional support if needed

· Probe generalisations, e.g. could you describe some specific incidents?

· Allow your interviewee to complete their story

· Encourage interviewees to reconstruct physical environments, conversations, if appropriate

· Invite evaluations, e.g. why do you think that happened?

· Respect silences if there are pauses while your interviewee collects and/or selects memories

· Provide positive reinforcement to assure you interviewees that the memories they are offering are worthwhile, e.g., that’s a very interesting point. Could you tell me more about that?

· Ask for and make use of family photographs and other personal documents and papers if appropriate

· Spend time with your interviewee after the tape has been switched off

· Try to end on a positive note and bring your interviewee back to the present

Don’t
· Interrupt a story

· Impose your way of thinking or your order of topics, as people construct and tell their stories very differently

· Dominate the interview

· Ask leading questions

· Interrogate your interviewee

· Ask questions which have already been answered

· Ask questions by telling all you know first

· Put forward your opinions or moral judgements

· Be afraid of silences and pauses

· Exhaust your interviewee