Using Archival Data to Examine Interview Methods: The Case of the Former Slave Project

Abstract

Unlike historians, qualitative researchers’ engagement in studies in which archival sources form the core data corpus is less common than the exploration of newly generated data. Following scholars who have argued for secondary analysis of qualitative data, in this article, I illustrate how qualitative researchers might explore archival data methodologically. Examinations of archival records help us think about how research methods change over time and compare approaches to current practice. This article draws on records from the Federal Writers’ Project (FWP), one of the New Deal initiatives launched by President F. D. Roosevelt in the United States. The FWP was a work relief program administered during the Depression years in the 1930s that employed 6,500 white-collar workers as fieldworkers, writers, and editors to solicit stories from 1,000s of men and women across the country, including stories of over 4,000 former slaves. This article focuses on the role of interviewing in the Former Slave Project, examining methodological issues of concern observed by administrators and critics of the project, along with what we might learn and how we might think about these issues in contemporary interview research.

Slowing Down and Digging Deep: Teaching Students to Examine Interview Interaction in Depth

“…For over 35 years scholars have used EM and CA to examine the construction of interviews, including news interviews (Clayman & Heritage, 2002), standardized survey interviews (Houtkoop-Steenstra, 2000;Maynard et al, 2002;Suchman & Jordan, 1990), and qualitative interviews (Baker, 1983;Hester & Francis, 1994;Roulston, 2006Roulston, , 2019. The argument for using EM and CA to examine interview talk rests on the idea that interviews are organized social activities that take place as part of everyday life.…”

“…Brewer, J. Atkinson, & J. Lewis, 2019) and has contributed a chapter in Interactional studies of qualitative research interviews (edited by K. Roulston, 2019).…”

Writing strategies in autoethnography and memoir: Methodological legacies from three activist-scholars

“…Recent work in qualitative research has been attentive to such processes, but the field has given little attention, so far, to the historical legacy of personal narrative in anthropology, sociology, and literature. While there are some wonderful exceptions, (e.g., Roulston, 2019;Brinkmann et al, 2020;Elfreich and Dennis, 2022), the discipline's discussion of its own past tends either to be highly generalized, as in Denzin and Lincoln's (2003) overview of the "traditional period," or to be focused mainly in the recent divergence between positivism and post-structuralism. This truncated view of history distances current researchers from a range of interpretivist ideas and methods, many of which were highly influential in their time, (Darnell, 2001).…”