Using life history interviews to overcome challenges in the field

Peter Davis

Strengths of life history interviews in challenging situations

• Life histories are chronological and can resemble conversations many people are used to conducting already with friends and family. This allows interviews to be longer without boring the interviewee;

• They are useful in exploratory research because unexpected events, problems, combinations of causes, can emerge;

• They allow rapport to build during the interview;• They allow recall and accuracy to improve as the interview progresses;• They allow crosschecking with national and local events;• They allow counterfactual thought experiments – such as asking: ‘what

would have happened if…’ -type questions;• They allow the significance of interventions and life-events to be seen

within a wider context;• They allow particular interesting episodes to be explored in more detail;• They allow sensitive topics to be explored in a relaxed and natural

conversation after rapport has been developed.

Life history interviews (cont.)

• Interviews allow rapport to be built so you can explore motivations, processes, reasons, counterfactuals

• Before you conduct an interview ask yourself why an interview is best suited for the research question

– Is factual information available elsewhere?

– Can some personal factual information can be collected in a preliminary questionnaire survey?

Interviewer name

Date / /2007

Village Union

Upazila District

Household number GPS

Respondent’s name Husband/wife’s name

Relation to household head Number of household members

Sex

1. male

2. female

Age

(year of birth)

( )

Religion

1.Muslim

2.Hindu

3.Christian

4.Buddhist

5.Other

Education

Original Job Job now

Place of birth Marital status

1.married

2.never married

3.divorced

4.abandoned

5.widow/ widower

Total number of children (living) Number of children living in household

Recording dictaphone/file/number / / Computer audio file number

A coversheet can be useful, e.g.

Example of consent form (in a context where interviewees cannot

read and are reluctant to sign a consent form)

• I _______________________________ have checked that the respondent:

• understands that this research is to gain a better understanding of the causes that lie behind the changes in levels of people’s wellbeing in Bangladesh

• agrees to be interviewed by the researcher

• gives permission for the interview to be audio recorded

• agrees be available for a further interview if required

• understands names and identifying details (e.g. village name) will be changed and access to recordings and transcripts will be restricted to the researcher and supervisor to protect his/her identity from being made public

• understands that participation is voluntary and that he/she can choose not to participate in part or all of the project, and can withdraw at any stage of the project without being disadvantaged in any way

• Signed (interviewer):

• For age checking use:

– National events: 1947-partition, 1965-Indo-

Pak war, 1971-Independence, 1975-Sheikh

Mujib’s death, 1981-Zia Rahman’s death,

1988-flood, 1990-protest and end of Ershad

era, 1998-flood.

– Local events: floods, droughts, roads built,

electrification, schools built etc.

Checklist used for life history interviews in Bangladesh

Checklist for life history interviews

(cont.)

• Family life history: marriage dates (dowry, wedding costs), births (children etc), deaths (parents, siblings, children, spouse), separation of property.

• Education and training history: own education, what level, reason for leaving education, sibling’s education, children’s education

• Employment history: dates of jobs, who helped to get a job, business starting-finishing, assets bought or sold, how were assets bought (loans, savings, mortgage, sale of land etc), promotions, loss of job, migration for work (national, international)

• Asset and loans history: land (bought, sold, lost, mortgage, leased); livestock; buildings (house, shop); pond; materials (bamboo, bricks, tin); trees (when sold and why); jewellery; furniture; cooking utensils; loans, savings.

• Migration and place history: reasons for moving (marriage, employment, security, other), family members moving.

• Health and illness history: chronic illnesses, illness before death of relatives, accidents, medical expenses

• Identity and membership history: NGO samiti, ROSCA, neighbourhood groups, kinship (bangsho), religious groups, labour union, political group, who do they celebrate Eid or other festivals with, samaj, who are ‘amader lok’?, who helps in times of crisis?

Checklist for life history interviews

(cont.)• Crisis and coping history:

– Crisis: dowry, illness, flooding, crop loss, livestock losses, business loss, unemployment or job loss, divorce, court cases, land and property division, migration, death of family members, accidents, injuries, cheating, theft, violence, threats, intimidation, extortion, conflicts and disputes, loans. In these crises who helped and why?

– Coping: • Forms: sales, loans, savings, labour, business, mortgage, informal help, local collections, religious

charity, begging, common property, divorce, migration, marriage, child labour, sending children away, crime.

• Channels: own resources, kinship, friends, employers, neighbours, community groups, NGOs, public programmes, political leaders, mohajan, mastaans.

• Opportunities and improvements history: job, land (bought, gift), dowry, remittances, loan, Govt. programme (VGD, VGF, boyoshko bhatta, bidhoba bhatta, mukti juddho bhatta) pension, provident fund, savings, son working, daughter working.

• Look for:

• How social structures (roles, values, norms, sanctions) have constrained or enabled people’s agency (choices, options, opportunities).

• How endowments and circumstances (economic, health, status, education, memberships) have interacted with events and episodes (crises and opportunities).

• How sequences or combinations of events have combined.

• How life cycle position is important.

Overview of the life-history phase(March to October 2007)

• Life histories of 293 individuals

• 160 selected households

• 8 of the districts in the original quantitative study

• We selected two villages (in different unions) in each district from the previous study

• In each village we selected 10 households on the basis of poverty transition matrices constructed using the quantitative household survey

• All interviews were digitally recorded, written-up by the researchers, and analysed using nVivo 7 and 8

Map of the Study Sites

Nilphamari (38)

Kurigram (39)

Tangail (39)

Kishoreganj (19)

Mymensingh (18)

Manikganj (72)

Jessore (36)

Cox’s Bazar (32)

Life-history districts

(number of interviews)

Planning, piloting and training

• In an initial training workshop in Dhaka we:– planned the first life histories - in Manikganj, the closest district to

Dhaka

– developed a life history interview guide

– planned our approach

– decided to purchase gifts (a bowl worth Tk 80) for each household

• Once in the field we spent the first day conducting pilot interviews in a village away from the sample sites – after these interviews we discussed the approach in a classroom in the

NGO office where we were staying using a whiteboard to draw diagrams of the life histories

• After the first site, we returned to Dhaka for another one-day debriefing before heading to the next site

Sampling

• We selected two villages in each study district– in a strategic and purposive way– in discussions with researchers– in different unions with a range of conditions

• Twenty households were selected in each district• We grouped households from each of the four categories from a transition

matrix ( ‘chronically poor’, ‘chronically rich’, ‘move up’, and ‘move down’)

• We aimed to randomly select five households in each category per site• However numbers of ‘move down’ households were fewer than the

other categories, and in some sites it was not possible to find five in this category

• In Educational Transfer sites (Nilphamari, Tangail, Cox’s Bazar) there were only ten households per village in the original survey so we selected all of these households

The programme in each village

• 10 to 14 days in each village• We located households first and checked availability of

respondents• We started interviewing with households where both

members were available• When possible we interviewed husband and wife separately

at the same time to avoid multiple trips to the same household and allow triangulation

• At the start of the week where only one member was available we left that household till later in the week finding out when both would be available

• We arranged a time for ‘knowledgeable people’ to attend a discussion meeting on the last day in the village

• When I was with the team I sat in on one of the male or female interviews.

The life history interview

• Two interviews per household– Maintained gender balance– Helped triangulate and compare different versions of events from the

perspective of two household members• The team: 4 interviewers, Davis and a driver• Each respondent was interviewed by two researchers of the same sex• Respondents were often husband and wife, but in some cases, such as when one

partner had died, we interviewed one parent and their son or daughter• All interviews were recorded using digital dictaphones• We used historical markers, such as the 1971 war of independence and 1988

floods, to help determine the time of particular events• At the end of the life history interviews, the researcher who facilitated the

interview drew a diagram of respondent’s life history from the time-line of events that he or she had drafted during the interview

• The other researcher wrote up the life history in written form based on the notes she had taken during the interview

• Only two interviews were conducted per day to allow the diagram to be finalised and interview to be written up in the same day

An initial trajectory diagram

46 year-old man, Nilphamari District

Final diagram

Village focus groups and wellbeing ranking exercise

• During the life-history fieldwork in each village at least one (sometimes more) additional focus group discussion was carried out in order to map a history of the village.

• The ‘development’ of the village was mapped on a trajectory diagram similar to the individual life history diagram, recording important village events, periods of opportunity, perceived causes (new crops, irrigation, new roads, electricity etc.) and community level shocks (storms, floods, crop failure, fertiliser shortages etc.)

• At the end of these discussions households were placed in the five wellbeing categories (now and ten years ago)

• Reasons for these choices were discussed and causes of decline or improvement were explained. These discussions were audio recorded.

Team round-table discussions

• At the end of our time in each village the team met for a round-table discussion and wellbeing levels for each household were finally decided and written onto the trajectory diagrams in such a way that at any time the wellbeing level could be clearly seen

• These final levels were based in the knowledge gained from the life-history interviews as well as the village focus-group levels

• These discussions were also audio recorded

Forms of data in the life history research

Text – in bangla and

translated

Life histories

Field-work diaries

Notes from the wellbeing-level focus groups

Village histories

Diagrams Life history diagrams

Community/ village history diagrams

Audio, photos and video Audio recordings of all the life history interviews

Audio recordings of the village focus groups – which

included household ranking exercise.

Audio recordings of the team discussions where

wellbeing levels were assigned to the households

Photos of most household members and local places of

interest

Short videos showing household assets and a short

discussion with respondents in many of the households.