How to Conduct an Oral History Interview: Planning, Questions, Listening and Follow-Up

Oral history is a collaboration. Good interviews rest on mutual trust, empathy and respect, and people's stories are among the most precious things entrusted to a historian's care. Planning, preparation and practice make good interviews. This guide is part of the National Park Service's Oral History Project Process series.

An oral history interview. NPS.

Before the interview

Plan the project. Decide what you want to learn from interviews; what written primary and secondary sources suggest still needs asking; whether other archives already hold similar interviews; what your interviewees think matters; and your main goal. Write a short mission statement: the project's purpose, the kinds of narrators, and how the interviews will be used.

Write an interview guide of the topics you plan to cover.

Choose narrators. Settle how many people and what cross-section to interview, who matters most, and what your budget and staff allow.

Hold a pre-interview. Tell narrators why you are interviewing and how the recordings will be used; gather basic biography; explore the topics they are best placed to discuss; and explain that they will be asked to sign a legal release permitting use of the interview.

Ask yourself before each interview: how can it be useful to others? What divides you from the narrator — age, gender, race, class, ethnicity, education, politics — and how can you find common ground or turn differences to advantage? What might this person contribute? Which topics may be sensitive? Have you practiced your questions? Is your equipment working?

Setting up

• Arrive on time, and leave a few minutes to visit before and after — trust and rapport are the foundation.
• Pick a place comfortable for the narrator, where you can see the recording levels while keeping eye contact.
• Listen to the room: ask to turn off a radio, TV or other noise if needed.

Asking questions

Good interviewing takes temperament as much as technique: empathy, eagerness to learn, and respectful listening. You are there to listen — it is the narrator's story.

• Open the recording with the names of interviewer and narrator, the date, place and project, and ask for the narrator's spoken consent to record.
• Start easy: routine questions such as when and where they were born. Leave sensitive topics for later.
• Ask open questions that invite a story — What shaped your decision to join the National Park Service? What was your first job like? — beginning with who, what, when, how and why.
• One question at a time, in clear words.
• Be curious: ask the narrator to explain, to define unfamiliar words, and to describe objects.
• Show interest: smile, nod, and encourage with your eyes and body language.
• Follow the thread and ask follow-ups — Can you explain? Can you describe that in more detail? Can you give me an example? — which draw out deeper memories.
• Avoid leading questions: not Did you disagree with the new superintendent's policies? but What did you think of the new superintendent's policies?
• Save tougher questions for the second half, and phrase them gently: Some people remember disagreement about the preservation program. What did you think about it?
• Be comfortable with silence — people need time to think.
• Watch body language, expression and tone: is the narrator tired, upset, or eager to say more?
• Use memory cues such as artifacts, photographs and maps.

The two-sentence format: the first sentence says why you are asking, or why you are changing topic; the second is the question. Career choices affect whole families, not just the Park Service employee. How did your family react when you told them you could take a job at a park in another part of the country?

The two-sentence technique. NPS.

Interviewing is an art, like a dance in which you move with your partner; everyone develops a style, and skill grows with practice and reflection. Interviews are also complex relationships: know your own biases and assumptions. Differences of race, gender, age, class and ethnicity can be barriers — and chances to build bridges.

Ending

• Ask summary questions: What else would you like to talk about? Is there anything I didn't ask that I should know?
• Keep interviews to about 90 minutes — asking, listening and remembering are tiring. Schedule a second session if there is more to say.
• Have the narrator complete and sign the legal release form.

As the interview ends, the narrator signs the legal release form. NPS.

Afterwards

• Write brief field notes on your immediate thoughts, the setting and the dynamics.
• Send a written thank-you note.
• Make a copy of the recording for transcribing or indexing.
• Listen back and assess the interview and your own part in it.

Oral historian Valerie Raleigh Yow offers a scoring checklist for critiquing your own interviews: points for things like empathy, careful listening, explaining changes of topic and well-judged follow-ups, and deductions for things like interrupting, leading questions and asking several questions at once.

Further reading

• Case studies from the NPS: interviewing NPS employees, interviewing Deaf narrators, and interviewing about difficult topics.
• Introductions: Donald Ritchie, Doing Oral History; Barbara W. Sommer and Mary Kay Quinlan, The Oral History Manual; Valerie Raleigh Yow, Recording Oral History.
• Difficult interviews: work by Shanna Farrell, Arthur A. Hansen, Mark Klempner, and Anna Sheftel and Stacey Zembrzycki.
• In the series: previous, Considering Legal and Ethical Issues; next, Preservation and Access.

Sources

Based on "Interviewing," Oral History Project Process series, National Park Service; a work of the United States government in the public domain. Valerie Raleigh Yow's checklist, from Recording Oral History (AltaMira Press, 2005), is summarized in hubnx's own words; the source's reflection questions are left out. The source spells one author's name "Zembrzychi"; it is corrected to Zembrzycki.