Any tips on interviewing people?
When you're interviewing somebody,make sure that the atmosphere is relaxed,so that they feel at ease. Probably, the first few questions that you ask them are going to provide stilted answers, But I think, when you interview them, it's a good idea to send them a short list of questions in advance, so that they can think through the line of questioning you're going to follow, and then, they'll have thought about the kinds of answers they're going to give. I mean, these may be supported by documents and other forms of family ephemera that you can use as prompts; so, family documents are extremely useful for actually prompting people into telling you further anecdotes and, if you sense that the person is getting tired, or they're becoming rather sensitive about a subject, be very wary about going down that route any further, Avoid being judgmental, because our culture, the culture that we live in at the moment, might well be different to the sort of culture that they lived in themselves, when they were children. There may be family secrets,so again you'd have to be sensitive about going down that route, as well.
