Social Science

Interview Write up

Because your paper will be only about 4-5 pages (double-spaced), you will inevitably not use all of the information you collect in your interview – and this is normal in any research (qualitative or quantitative). Your task will be to select excerpts from the interviews in order to illustrate several main points.

As you begin to think about organizing your collected data and writing your paper, you will need to pull out themes running through the interviews. In particular, think about similarities and differences in your informants’ experiences of being a woman/man/other gender. For instance, perhaps you find that their experiences in paid work are vastly different, but their experiences in intimate relationships have some similarities. If so, you can use direct quotes from the interviewees to illustrate the discussion of these themes. The organization of your paper will be very important to your overall grade on this assignment; the paper should include the following sections (clearly labeled):

1.An Introduction to the paper in which you briefly discuss what you see as your major findings (i.e., what interesting issues about family emerged from your interviews). The introduction should include a brief description of the key informants.

2.Results of the data will form the bulk of the paper. It is critical that you link your data to concepts, theories, and issues that we’ve been discussing and reading about in class. *Put each concept or theory you use in your paper in bold font the first time you use it (and normal font subsequent times). You can’t discuss all issues; you’ll need to select the ones that are most clearly related to your interviewees and your data. Do not simply describe the interviews from start to finish, and don’t try to include all the date you collect.

3.The Conclusion should very briefly summarize your interview experiences. You should address questions like the following: What was the interview experience like? Did it give you any new insight on issues you learned about this semester?