Pre-Interview Assessment

Perform an informal pre-interview conversation that explains the scope of the project and how/where the interview will be conducted. Make sure to express that the interview will be used for educational proposes in the context of a college course. Once this is complete, respond to the following prompts/questions:

  1. Describe the details of your pre-interview conversation. How did the interviewee respond to your request for an interview?

    2. My grandmother spoke to me about her attending the local library in town and asking if I can accompany her to it, which I agreed to but we have yet to go at the time of writing this. I then presented her with the possibility of an interview because of her love of books and writing recipes and she agreed to it.

  2. How do you plan to record the interview (e.g. digital voice recorder or camera, smartphone, etc.)? How will you ensure that your technology will work effectively at the scheduled interview time?

    3. The Interview will be recorded with either a digital voice recorder or camera depending on which ever my grandmother is more comfortable with. More than likely it will be on my phone, which I have tested several times before deciding that it will be the device to record the interview.

  3. Where will the interview take place? How will you set up the interview environment to avoid interruptions or distractions?

    4. The interview will be done within the room that she is staying in at my mother’s house to not cause any outside distractions and to make her as comfortable as possible.

  4. What steps will you take to make sure the interviewee feels comfortable?

    5. As stated before, I will make sure that she feels comfortable by making the interview as casual as possible along with providing her with the questions that I will ask her before the interview so that she can come up with answers before the recording session.

  5. Write and list at least 5 interview questions that will help guide the interview.

Post-Interview Assessment

After conducting the oral history interview, answer the following questions:

  1. How did I choose the person to be interviewed? What biographical information is relevant to present with this interview?

    2. I chose my grandmother because of her love of books as well as having done a class assignment in the past involving my grandfather, her husband, a few years ago so I thought it would be all right to do the same with her.

  2. How did I prepare for the interview? Did I prepare enough?

    3. I feel like I did prepare somewhat for the interview, despite not having a question list that I wanted to fill I was confident in the casualness that I wanted to create with the conversation that I had with my grandmother.

  3. What did I use for equipment? Did it work satisfactorily? What changes should I make?

    4. I used my phone and a stand for the recording and it worked better than I thought. The one thing I would have wanted to change was the angle at which the camera was at. Halfway through the interview you can hear me talking about the angle and it wasn’t to my satisfaction.

  4. What kinds of questions did I ask? What kinds of questions worked well? Not so well?

    5. For the interview, I did not prepare super serious questions and presented it as a casual conversation between two people and the love of books and written material.

  5. Where did I conduct the interview? What in the environment affected my interview? How?

    6. Like I stated in the pre-assessment questions, I conducted the interview in her bedroom to maximize comfort for her. Which was a perfect area because we could pull up books that she had gotten from the library and was currently reading.

  6. Did my subject want to talk? How did I encourage my subject to talk? What "masks" did my subject wear? Did my subject drop the masks?

    7. My grandmother was very eager to talk about the books that she had been reading and how material like it shaped her life.

  7. When did I tell my subject the purpose of the interview and how it would be used? Did my plans to use the interview seem to matter to the subject?

  8. I spoke to my grandmother about the purpose of the interview before conducting the video and she was perfectly fine about it. I don’t think the plans to use this interview dismayed her from talking about it.

  9. How accurate were my subject's memories?

    10. My grandmother’s memories on subjects were accurate.

  10. How accurate was my subject's reporting of her memories? How do I know? Does it matter?

    11. I believe her memories are accurate, there is no way to be certain but she recalled many things from her books that she had read with the utmost certainty. It matters that she is able to recall these moments from her reading because it tells us that she understands and is engaged with the reading material.

  11. Who controlled the interview? How?

    12. I want to say that I helped in steering the interview, but my grandmother did a majority of the talking. When she gets into topics that she is well versed in, she can go on for a very long time. Which is not a bad thing as I love listening to her talk.

  12. How did I feel while interviewing?

    13. I felt relaxed as I viewed this interview as a normal talk that me and her have. Though I was a bit nervous that we wouldn’t have enough to cover for the interview, but as we talked that nervousness went away as well as the time.

  13. How did my subject feel while being interviewed?

    14. I don’t know how she felt during the interview, I didn’t ask her. But I think that she was comfortable talking about books in her life and what she does regarding them.

  14. Would it be useful and possible to return for another interview?

    15. Yes, absolutely, there could be another interview. My grandmother loves to talk about her life and what she does during the day so it wouldn’t be a professional interview, just a talk between grandmother and grandson.

  15. How can I ensure that the transcription is accurate? How can I ensure that the transcription reports what the subject wanted to say?

    16. To make sure that the transcription is accurate as possible, I will need to listen to the video and type down what is being said. I’ll use my name and her name to show when the conversation changes between people.

  16. Next time, what would I do the same? What would I do differently?

    17. The things that I would have wanted to change are how I had things set up. Things like the chair that I was using squeaking at the slightest movement, the curtains in the background not being down due to needing a remote that is missing, and the angle of the phone’s camera being a bit better.

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Created April 4rd, 2026