Interview Assignment . ( 4 Pages )
Goals: This project will give you an opportunity to: ·
- Experience and identify the benefits and limitations of using interviews as a method of gathering data about women’s health. ·
- Learn how illnesses and/or encounters with our health care system can affect one woman’s life. ·
- Gather information about women’s health experiences that will be interesting and useful to you ·
Tasks:
Interview a woman, preferably a woman who is from a different generation than you and whose social background is different from yours, a woman whose social class, region, race, ethnic group or sexual orientation is unlike your own. · Take notes during the interview. Write an essay which summarizes the interview. Begin with a description of the woman and her health concerns; include at least a couple of quotations from the interview but do not include the entire interview.
Discuss your experiences during the interview, the questions which it raised for you, the implications of the stories in the interview for those concerned with women’s health and well-being. Write one paragraph which evaluates the interview process. What can and can’t we learn about women’s health using informal interviews? (7-15 paragraph essay – about 1000-1200 words).
Content of Interview: Note:
Students in this course have often found it interesting and valuable to interview their mother or grandmother. Interview should deal with one or two of the woman’s health experiences, either how her life has impacted her health, her health impacted her life or how she has experienced encounters with the health care system. If your interview subject is uncomfortable sharing her own experiences, you can ask her to relate stories she knows about other women’s experiences.
One good first question is – did your mother tell her what it was like for her when you were born?
Other useful questions, if the interview slows down: do feel your mother’s life and your life were essentially similar or have there been important changes in women’s health care in your two lives?
What would you like to see change?
What would you hope for a daughter, a grand daughter?
Potential topics: birth, birth control, cancer, work life, violence, changing residence, marriage, drug/alcohol use, dieting and weight control, being responsible for other people’s health and caring for the ill, working in health care, dealing with HIV or cancer or heart disease or other potentially chronic or terminal diseases.