Summary
Summary Life History Interview in Social Research
- Module
- Social Research
- Institution
- Bournemouth University Talbot Campus (BUTC)
Details on Life History Interview methods in Social Research
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ISR: Life History InterviewsWhat are life history interviews?
A qualitative method of data collection where people are asked to document their
life over a period of time. It is a personal account of their life, in their own words &
using their own personal timelines (Ssali et al. 2015)
Interchangeably used terms (different names with same meaning)
Oral history interview
Life history interview/method
Biographical interview
Life story interview
Renaissance of the life history interview
‘The biographical turn’ in sociological enquiries (Chamberlayne et. Al., 2000)
The emergence of postmodernism in the 1990s
The rejection of the ontology of universal ‘truths’
Emphasis on the value of local knowledge that is ‘historically & culturally grounded’
(Coffey 2001, p.53)
Growing interest in & the importance of individual agency & subjectivity in social life
(Bryman, 2011)
Why choose the life history?
To understand an individual more fully – we need to know their life history & the
processes by which they become who they are
To understand identify as an emergent narrative that goes through transformation
throughout the individual life
To evaluate & understand how social change is lived through by the individual
Particularly suitable to the study of the marginalised group
Advantages vs disadvantages
Adv Disadv
A window through which the interviewer A reliance on memory & its partial &
observes the world of the interviewee in its articulated characteristics raises questions
full complexity (Yow 1994) – understand regarding the validity of the life history date
the person more fully
Personal accounts are salient in Are personal accounts reliable as data?
investigating the interaction between the How sure are we that interviewees are
individual & society (The Personal telling the truth?
Narratives Group 1989)
Provides ‘continuities of participatory Is it possible to document the ‘entire’ life of
identities across changes in place & time’ a person?
(Middleton & Hewitt 2000, p.273)
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