LIFE HISTORY

INTERVIEWING
LESSON FIVE
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Lesson 5: Life History Interviewing
This section describes life history interviews as a way of collecting data about economic
struggle and success. Students read life history interview questions, compare and contrast the
answers, and begin to develop the ability to ask in-depth and empathetic questions of peers
and adults. They learn to see those around them as having complex lives, full of lessons about
struggle, possibility, and support.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
• Understand what makes life history interviewing different from other kinds of
interviews, particularly for understanding economic lives
• Compare a range of answers to the same question in order to look for surprising
statements, draw connections, and develop hypotheses
• Consider what makes a good question about someone's life and develop a set of
questions to ask

ESSENTIA L QUESTIONS

• How are life history interviews different from other ways of finding out about a person?
• Have you ever asked older people about their lives? What have you learned? If not, why
haven't you asked? What would you like to know?

MATERIALS

• Interview questions and answers

• Interview question worksheet

CONCEPTS

• Methodology: A way of finding out information from individuals in order to draw larger
conclusions.
• Life history interview: A series of questions one can ask to find out about the unfolding of
someone's life course.

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ACTIVI TY: UNDERSTANDING LI FE HISTORY INTERVIEWING
Interviews take a wide range of forms. Job interviews may ask you to speak about your skills and
work experiences in a very positive light. Opinion polls might ask for your attitudes about a
particular issue. Life history interviews involve asking people about all the parts of their lives,
including childhood, young adulthood, and old age. Unlike interview questions that ask directly
about income, hours worked, or debt, life histories can tell us a lot about how people made the
choices they made and how they weathered ups and downs.

Have students read over the attached interview questions and imagine how a member of their
family might answer them.

In small groups, have students read over the answers from various participants in the life history
research project. Then, compare and contrast their statements. What answers stood out? What did
students expect? What surprised them? How were the answers different or similar? What else
would students like to know?

In small groups, develop a list of three questions one could ask about someone's life. As a class,
share the questions and work together to refine and pick the ones most likely to lead to interesting
and useful answers.

Now, students will do some interviewing of their own. Break the class up into pairs. In each pair,
one person should be the interviewer - the one asking the questions just prepared - and one
person should be the interviewee.

Once students are done, talk about what it was like to be in each of their roles. What was
challenging? Surprising? Awkward? Then, as a class, discuss what makes a good interviewer and
interviewee.

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SUPPLEMENTA L RESOURCES

• How to conduct an interview: [Link]

• Life history interviewing: [Link]
interview

THE CASCADING LI VES PROJECT© 2021

We invite you to visit our website, [Link]/cascading-lives, to access the full
Cascading Lives Digital Toolkit. There, you can also find additional resources produced by
the Cascading Lives Project.

The correct citation for the Cascading Lives Digital Toolkit is:
Cascading Lives Project 2021. "Cascading Lives Digital Toolkit." Brandeis University.
[Link]/cascading-lives.

CONTACT US

EMAIL:
cascading@[Link]

PHONE:
781-736-2651

MAIL:
Cascading Lives Project
Karen V. Hansen
Department of Sociology
MS 071
Brandeis University
415 South St.
Waltham, MA 02452

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Lesson 5: Life History Interview Questions & Answers
QUESTIONS:

• As a high school student, looking to your future, what did life success mean to you?
• How has COVID changed the work you do?
• Over the course of one’s life, there are moments that change your direction, or that
challenge you, or during which you go through a period of decline and maybe of recovery.
Have you ever experienced something like that?

QUESTION 1: As a high school student looking to your fu tu r e , wh a t d id life s u c c e s s

mean to y o u ?

• TIM , performer: Two of the teachers that I had were either professional actors or worked in
professional theaters in Philadelphia. I had friends of mine through the theater program that
were older and so graduated well ahead of me. And they went off to like work for a touring
show, being the spotlight operator for some cool show. And I was like, Oh man, like, that's
cool being the lighting designer for some band as they do their concerts across the country.
That's where you go. It's not going to be high school theater forever. So that looked like a
path to success through a thing that I was passionate about. I think from my family, I got the
message that success was a steady income, responsible use and spending of money, smart
investments. And I kinda knew by the time I was graduating high school, I knew that my
dad was not in love with his work, like “I love radiology and everything that it stands for.”
It was: “I got into it because I knew that there was money in it and it's not my passion, but I
think I'm good at.”

• LIZ, performer: At that point, I was thinking about my future a lot because I hadn't gotten
sick yet, so I didn't really know what that was going to be for me. I was just very narrowly
focused on getting into a good school. I didn't have specific career goals in high school. I felt
like I need to get into the best school and then, you know, keep on getting the best grades.
And then it's just like more of the same. I didn't have much imagination and creativity. I was
just like, okay, I'm just gonna keep doing this. It was weird cause it was like so much of it
was pressure that I placed on myself.

• AG USTÍN , line cook: From the point of view of a 16-year-old, a successful life was living in
the big city, having your own house, your own car, but we are talking about more than 25
years ago. How to help my parents, my brothers, my family. To be successful was to be able
to help my family. Also, I have to add that when I was 16, since I read so much, my dreams
were always dreams of, you always associate success with money, right? …Yeah, so it was
oh, I’m going to study hard so that I’ll have so much money and then I’ll be happy, and
always when I was young, I associated happiness with wealth. But I was already happy, I
just didn’t know it, right?

• JE N N E K E , event coordinator: No, I don't think I really was that forward looking. I mean, I
kind of had an assumption that I would get married and have kids, you know, I used to
write down Mrs. So and so but I think I wasn't an original thinker in how things were going
to go. I figured I would get married in my mid to late twenties have kids. Yeah. It wasn't
very original.

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 • JE N IF E R , cake baker: For me, it meant earning goods grades, getting good marks. At that
time, being able to go to university and have a career. For me, that was what success looked
like. Arriving here, it changed my life, but then I didn’t just sit around. I went to school to
learn English, for three years, four years in a school, learning English. I can bake, I can make
you a five-tier wedding cake or a classic birthday cake. I am a doctor and I know how to
make a bed, I know how to clean a house and a bathroom, and I learned all of that because I
was taught to work since I was little. it’s true, I don’t have a job right now, I’m not
practicing my profession, and it was difficult to process since I’ve been trained. My dream
was to be a professional doctor, to buy a house for my parents, to buy a new car and to
travel all over the world. All of that at one time was my dream. Now I understand that this
is nothing, that is, education is important, I won’t deny that, and the most important thing
about that experience remains with you, in you, the experience of it. Those experiences that
stay with you from different periods of life, the friendships, the experiences. Those are what
is most beautiful about that, but that itself is not the most important thing in life. I know
people who have important degrees and they are not successful. I know people who are
mechanics, carpenters, who are great and successful. I know bakers who are more
successful and more famous than any neurosurgeon. Do you understand what I’m trying to
say? It is not the title that gives you success and now I understand that. It is your essence, it
is what you bring from yourself.

QUESTION 2: How has COVID changed the work you do?

• ST EV E, restaurant owner: So, in March, 2020, when it became really obvious that it was
going to hit we closed that [restaurant] and pretty quickly our overall sales dropped 85%,
you know, we closed altogether. We furloughed a ton of staff. We did our best to make sure
they were taken care of, as best we could, you know. With the original $600 kicker on
unemployment and then $300 kicker unemployment, they were, they were doing okay. Our
landlord had been kind to us, but you still have to takes costs like heat and lights and you
know, maintenance fees and insurance, and all these costs that remain even though you're
closed. So we have to pay those, but that's still much cheaper than trying to run the
restaurant with a staff. We were losing money.

• RIC A RD O , bartender: Due to my age, I'm 52 years old. I decided, because I work on
Broadway, which is a very heavily touristed area that since we're so close to getting the
vaccines, I don't want to be the last guy that dies during World War II. So I've taken up
sabbatical until I can get my vaccine because I've been fortunate enough to make it so far.
When I explained the situation to them, they said, “Oh yeah, absolutely not a problem. Take
all the time you need. As soon as you're ready to come back, please come back. We'll be
happy to have you.”

• JA I, bartender: Before COVID hit, I was doing like two shifts a day, you know, and I was
making pretty decent money. I mean, I was averaging probably about maybe 60 to $70,000 a
year. And that was primarily from bartending because I got tips, but also, you know, I got
hourly pay. The type of jobs that are available right now, it’s different. I had to downgrade
my skillset and then just put those away, take any job that was available. Before I had a
wider selection, I often just focused on bartending, but now it's just, whatever comes up. It’ll
be security shifts, service shifts, whatever was available

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 • MARGARITA, restaurant worker: For me, for everyone, I think the changes have been
difficult, because we were not, or I was not used to being locked up, or to feeling constantly
like suddenly I am going to catch the virus, afraid all the time. With unemployment, I have
received some money, not what I normally received with my wage. With this help, it is
okay, I haven’t been so bad, but the changes, yeah, they are a lot really. A lot. There’s all the
suspense of "Will I get a job? What’s going to happen? Will this or that happen? Will it end?
What regulations are coming?" All of that…I believe that we are all feeling dread because
we do not know what will happen. I can’t know with certainty what will be coming for me,
in my case, personally. If I go out, doing many things, and I would like to do many things, I
would like to visit my family, to do one thing or the other, but the fear is always there that
you cannot meet up with people, you cannot be visiting stores, you shouldn’t be out on the
street. It’s that expectation. With work, there are not many people back at work yet, so it’s
"When will they call us again?" The airports have already opened, but no, the club members
have not come back yet, and no one knows if the members will come back, so perhaps the
clubs, the VIP Lounge, will close. That creates some fear or, let's say, insecurity.

QUESTION 3: Over the course of one’s life, there are moments that change your direction,
or challenge you, or where you go through a period of decline and maybe of recovery.
Have you ever experienced something like that?

• JA N E T , publicity: My younger brother died in 2017. It was rough and I was not doing well
emotionally and it was becoming hard to work and figure out all of the bills and stuff. And
so we just decided that I would move home so that I could recover emotionally, but then
also it would just sort of have the dual impact of paying down debt. I had thousands of
dollars in credit card debt.

• PA T R IC IA , hotel staff: It was when my son got diagnosed with autism. I had to continue
working and with everything that I had to do, I didn't know what to do. They told me they
were going to do ABA services that it was going to be up to 32 hours at home and I had to
be there. And I didn't see that I could manage it. That was the hardest time.

• JE N N E K E , event coordinator: My parents separated when I was in fourth grade and then
they got divorced. The judge decided my sister would stay with my dad and my brother
and I would live with my mom in California. So that was wacky. And that was by far the
hardest thing, but I was a pretty resilient seventh grader. It’s hard to say looking back
because I've defined myself and defined the experience since then. But I was resilient and
optimistic and being a teenager, I would get wrapped up. I got very wrapped up in my own
life. So I think it was harder at first. And then it got easier as time went on. That was six
years that we should have been together that we weren't.

• JE N IF E R , cake baker: Yes, when I came to this country and had to leave everything behind,
I had to drop everything that I’d been trained to do [laughter]. I had to leave my dreams, I
had to change them, change my mind, change my surroundings, leave my friendships. All
of that was really challenging.

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Lesson 5: Life History Interview Worksheet

INTERVIEWER ’S NAME:

QUESTIONS:

Where were your parents or guardians born?

What do your parents or guardians do for work?

How has the pandemic impacted you?

Where would you like to be in 5 years?

What do you want to be when you grow up?

What is your idea of success?

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