Interview

to interview someone sounds pretty basic. But to interview your informant correctly and successfully is very difficult if you are not properly equipped with the right tools. Alot of people go into interviews with pretty basic questions , not anticipating the unexpected , not building off other questions. Your goal in the interview is to get information you would have never guessed, informatiion that you have to dig for. So you must build your artillary with both open and closed questions to get to your goal. also do some research before you actually go into the interview so you are not blindsided and look very clueless about the subject because then the informant will give you really basic information. If you know your information already you can ask more advanced questions on topics you arnt to polished on. Also try and get the informant to describe and go into detail about stories ,artifacts and moments; because then you will get to the heart of the interview and the informant will open up alot more. For example the AIDS case in the book Jessie the informant is slowly lured into opening up when a sensitive subject about his dog is brought up and how much he cares for him and will miss him if anything happens to jessie because of the virus.

Listening is a big part of interviewing because if you listen carefully with gestures; showing your following along with the informant he/she will then feel motivated/encouraged to further elaborate on the subject at hand. I also learned this in the Comm Studies department because alot of people say communication majors are great speakers but what makes us great speakers is the superior listening skills we develop ;which gives us the advantage of knowing how to reply and give feedback to the speaker/listener.

• Prepare to Listen
• Prepare both open ended and closed questions
• Give gestures
• Dont be afraid to ask questions others wont ask
• Eye contact
• Dont get off subject too much