Activity: Planning Interviewing Strategies

Objectives:

• To conduct interviews with people in the neighborhood to get relevant information for the project
• To help participants learn interviewing skills

Duration: 1 – 3 hours

Procedure:

• As a first step, a script has to be created by the participants and facilitators together. The script should contain questions related to the most important social issues. The basis for the questions should be ‘who, when, where and how’.
• The facilitator should identify in advance some people in the community who are supportive of the idea of children’s participation and would welcome an interview with them
• The participants define their roles for interviewing –
  1. Who will interview the people identified for the interview in the community?
  2. Who will take down notes while another participant is interviewing?
  3. Who will take pictures with the camera?
  4. Who will establish where they are going? For example, identifying the streets, local areas and organizations.
• The facilitator oversees and co-ordinates the interviewing strategies of the participants

Comments: If there is a big group of participants (more than 6), they should work in smaller groups. A good way to achieve confidence in interviewing is to have small groups of children design questions and practice asking them of other children. This method might seem suitable only for older participants, but there are a variety of ways to use interviewing with participants of many ages, including those who are not literate. For participants with limited writing abilities, using a tape recorder in the interview enables them to obtain a complete record.

Analysis of the interview data can happen either in the same interview session or in the next session.

Notes from the Field: In the YAN project at Charlestown Computer Clubhouse, two social issues (drunk driving and garbage disposal) were chosen as a result of the neighborhood perception form activity. So the participants decided to analyze the importance of the issues by conducting interviews in the community. As a result of the interviews, garbage disposal proved to be the more important issue, which was then chosen for the project.