Oral history process
Mon. Jan. 27, 2025
Angela Carlson, Program Assistant for the Father-and-Son project in the German-Canadian Studies program outlines the oral history process.
- Interview - The oral history interview can take the form of a life story interview. This would start with an open-ended question, such as, “Can you tell me the story of your life?” According to Carlson, “The goal with the life story interview is to just leave it open to the [interviewee’s] interpretation so that they share whatever feels more natural for them.” Then the interviewer would follow up with more specific questions that relate to the research. Carlson states that for the Father-and-Son project the interviews will be shorter and they will come in with questions which will focus more specifically on the father and son relationship, such as “What was your relationship with your father? How did you experience fatherhood?”
- Digital recording and post processing - Interviews are digitally recorded and a transcript is created. Then an audit edit is done by a second person, or as Carlson says, “a fresh set of ears.” This person will listen to the recording and will review the transcript to make sure it’s accurate. Carlson states that they’ve been working on edited transcripts, which are “not direct verbatim where you have all sorts of starts and stumbles, but something that’s a little but more polished but still very much the spoken word as opposed to a written sort of prose.”
- Biography and summary - The interviewer pulls together a biography of the interviewee from what they’ve said or what the interviewer can find online and then they draft a summary of the interview. The summary enables others to see what the interview is about, without having to read or listen to the full interview.