Module 14:
Conducting Lec interviews
Overview
This module is focused on conducting the interviews for gathering data in LECs.
Learning outcomes: You'll be able to interview mentees and accurately prompt, collect, and organize data about their life events!
What we will do: First we'll read some general instructions for interviewing, then we'll leave the floor open to start figuring out what to ask in ours! If you have any, share them in our Discord!
Getting started
How are we making our LECs?
We're using an online survey service called Qualtrics. To gather the information, you'll be conducting a structured interview, where the questions you'll ask are already written out. You'll ask questions and prompt responses, and let the respondent answer for themself using a tablet provided for the survey. You can always jump in to help the respondent fill out this calendar. After that, Qualtrics will take care of the rest!
To start, you'll establish some base line events. These can be as high level as someone's birthday, and the holidays they may celebrate! These are some of the easiest things to remember and place; seeing them on the calendar will help start to place other events around it.
Follow that up with things like local, national, or other notable events that you and the mentee remember and can place in time together. We can call these primers - they help establish a timeline to place more personal events around. It's a lot easier to remember when and what you were doing when you can place it in context with something else.
Primer Example: Our friend in the photo here definitely remembers when he won that big tennis championship! This would be a great primer event for his LEC.
Remember: even though this is an interview, it's best to treat it more like a conversation. After establishing some baseline events, start with some big things in a personal life that are easiest to remember. These can include things like a family member being born, residence/housing, jobs, and school/education. These will also act as kinds of primers and help mentees place more personal events into perspective.
Unfortunately, due to limitations with Qualtrics, we'll have to do this separately for each of the three years we want to collect data on.
After Establishing Some Baseline Domains
Once we place these bigger and higher-level events, we can start getting a little more personal. Start with the easier personal events - questions like "Who are you living with now?" It tends to be easier to work backwards from the current moment to the past.
Once you've hit these high-level personal dimensions, it's time to get into the deeper, potentially more traumatizing stuff. This can be hard, but it's important to remember that this is conversational, and you have experience working down from trauma responses. There are a few things we want to capture:
Hobbies/activities interviewees are involved in - sports, after school programs, and volunteering
Health - things like doctor visits, injuries, and emergency room visits
Juvenile Justice involvement - including victimization and perpetration; interactions with police; and incarceration
Involvement with Credible Messaging/Mentoring - when mentees started these programs; when they haven't been involved
Schooling - grades, attendance, suspensions, and detentions
Relationships - what sorts of relationships are interviewees building and/or maintaining
Remember to keep in mind that we'll be asking about these things year by year. It could get confusing if anyone tries to jump around between years to stay within a domain, so focus on keeping each other on a particular year of events.
Once you've gone through all of these domains for each of the last three years, Qualtrics will move on to some personal evaluation questions for mentees to answer. You'll ask mentees how they feel about personal progress they've made. These might be a little tricky for some participants, but as a person they trust, you're able to help them through that challenge. Maybe share some of the techniques you use to come down from trauma responses.
Our previous experience using LECs shows that this method works best. We build a trusting and safe environment with the easier questions, then move into the more personal dimensions.
After you're through all that - it's time to double check everything! Together with your mentee, run back the events and domains you've already discussed to make sure they didn't accidentally misplace something. When you both feel confident everything is placed properly, it's time to submit!
The Takeaway: Understanding research and research methods makes us better consumers of information and community members! We can more easily spot whether information is reliable or legit. Being more informed on research helps us fully show up, whether in our organizations and communities... and especially when we vote on policies!