Guidelines for Students: Life Story Interviews

Subject Name:

HAS 121 Human Development in Social Context

Spring 2017

When you conduct your life story interviews you must adhere to certain guidelines in order to ensure that your research is ethical and does not pose a risk of harm to the participants. Each student will be required to sign and submit this form to indicate that you have read and understood these guidelines and agree to be bound by them.

Topic

• Your interview must not investigate issues of trauma or sensitive issues which may cause distress to research participants. If these issues come up in the life story interview, please stop the line of questioning and move on to the next question.
• You may not ask participants about any illegal/criminal behaviours. If the participant mentions illegal/criminal behaviours, please stop the line of questioning and move on to the next question.

English for Academic Purpose

Participants

• Your interview participant must be an adult over the age of 18. The participant must be one or more generations older than yourself, so if you are a young adult, you would interview a person in middle or older adulthood.
• You must not interview a member of your immediate family, such as your parent, sibling or spouse.
• Try to find a person that you know, or is known to one of your friends or family members, for the interview.

You are not permitted to conduct research with the following groups:

• Children under 18 years of age: If you are not sure of a potential participant’s age you must ask them. If they are below 18 years of age do not proceed.
• NSW Health sites –staff and patients.
• State schools – staff and students.
• Prisoners or detainees.
• Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander people, as this group may require further ethics approval which will not fit in to the time line for this project.

Searching For Evidence

Approaching participants

• You will conduct your interview face to face.
• You must provide each potential participant with a copy of the Participant Information Sheet.
• You must ensure that potential participants are able to freely consent to participating and not pressure them to do so in any way.
• You must not ask for or record the names or contact details of any of your participants in your interview notes or on the audiotape of the interview.

Interview locations

• The interview should take place at a location mutually agreed upon with the interviewee. The location should respect the interviewee’s privacy and allow them to comfortably share personal details.
• You should avoid recruiting participants by knocking on doors and you must never enter into a private household of someone unknown to you.

During the interview

Professional Project

• Use the interview protocol provided to ask questions in the interview.
• If the person you are interviewing shows signs of distress, offer to end the interview. Do not use the information and instead find another person to interview.

Interview notes

• As you conduct the interview, you may take notes on the participant’s comments and/or audiotape the interview.
• The interview notes and audio recording should not include the name of the interview. Select a made-up name (pseudonym) for the interviewee and use this name in the notes and assessment.
• After the release of marks for the subject, the interview notes and audio recordings must be destroyed. The subject coordinator will send a SOLS message reminding students to destroy the data after the release of marks for the subject.