Conducting Research Interviews

The last time I conducted a research interview was when I was sophmore in high school and it was for a term paper on World War II. The research was on the experience of people in the United States, and what the families who had son’s in the war went through. I interviewed an old friend of my mothers. The process of getting the questions together was not that difficult. The important thing I remember was to know the purpose of the research, and having some idea of what kind of answer you are expecting. I made observations on other research interviews and used them as models to conduct my own. This was a pretty big paper so the interview took quite some time. I brought with me an audio recorder and a notepad to write with as well. I had a lot of fun doing this especially because the topic was personal to me. I would say the difficult part of this was not the interview but more after the interview and how to gather the information and put it into my research paper.