Interview Write-Up: Learning from People
The purpose of the Research to Action process is to learn about people’s lives and needs, using your
understanding of culture and emotion to make a positive difference in the world. Toward this
purpose, each of us will engage real people, and then pool our results to build a collective dataset.
Your quick write-up of interview results is due on Canvas by 8PM on Sunday, September 15.
Two basic steps:
1. Engage real people. Interview 5+ people with 3-5 qualitative questions you design- use
probes to dig deep and shed light on culture and emotion – your questions should
specifically explore emotions and culture: symbols, beliefs, values, roles, scripts. Take
detailed notes, and record if you can!
2. Write up results. Post a quick summary of what you heard back from the qualitative
questions you designed. No need to include raw notes from the interviews but people matter – so you
will need to directly reference and quote what people said.
Remember that getting people to talk with you is hard work, so start soon! Here are the points you
should hit in your write-up – make sure and address every question to get the full 20 points:
1. Intro (3 pts). Which theme did you choose, and why? What aspects of culture and
emotion did you focus on? What group did you choose to study, and why did you
choose them?
2. Questions (3 pts). Paste in the 3-5 questions you designed, but don’t stop there.
Describe why you chose them: how specifically do they help you understand culture
and emotion? Which aspects of culture – symbols, beliefs, values, roles, scripts – did they
help you explore with your interviewees?
3. Lessons (10 pts). Identify the two most interesting themes from your results: for
instance, one focused on aspects of culture (symbol, belief, value, role, script) and one
focused on emotions. For each, take a paragraph to explain – pull specific quotes or
paraphrases to illustrate where your interviewees agree and disagree. Show why and how
the pattern you see is important to the issue you chose.
4. Intervention (4 pts). Suggest 2 interventions we could propose that would make a
positive difference for this group. How specifically do they change people’s culture –
how do they make new meanings or shift established meanings?
Full instructions are provided below the files.
