Interview Assignment: Connecting Local to Global

• Objective
  • Analyze
    how diversity affects interactions with major societal institutions
    (such as health care, criminal justice, education, employment, voting,
    military) from contemporary and/or historical perspectives.
  • Recognize
    that global issues and systems are experienced differently at local
    scales by identifying local problems via fieldwork and course readings
    and applying them to larger global concerns.
• Assignment
  • In
    a well-organized and well-written essay of three-to-four pages (5 pages
    max; full 3 pages minimum), you will address the question of diversity
    within your fieldwork institution from Essay 1.
  • This assignment
    will ask you to do a semi-structured interview with a participant about
    diversity at your field institution and relate your question to broader
    global issues. Make sure you address feedback on your writing in from previous essays as you write your assignment.
  • Your essay should cover the following points:
    • Address a diversity-based problem or issue based on prior participant observation at your institution (field setting).
      • What social problem or issue did you observe that might be an issue at your field site?
      • You should use your prior observations, course readings, discussions, and current events to develop and support a strong thesis statement about the problem of diversity at your field institution.
    • Semi-structured interview.
      These allow you to get in-depth information from a particular person
      based upon existing data, such as your results from participant
      observation. You will develop a list of 7-10 questions to ask your
      participant about the problem you identified. You must take notes during
      your interview, transcribe them into a Word document, and turn them in
      along with your essay. Your transcript should not be part of the essay.
    • Analysis.
      You should re-read your interview and identify themes that are related
      to your social issue. How do your participant’s responses relate to the
      problem that you identified?
    • Connecting local to global.
      What is the relationship between the problem you identified in your work
      and larger global concerns? Use topics from class discussion, materials
      from the textbook and course readings to help you connect your local
      results to global trends and conditions.
  • As with the first assignment, the assignment should be turned in as a Microsoft Word document in 12-pt. font with 1” margins.
  • It MUST be submitted both in class and online through Canvas.
• Evaluation
  • You will be graded out of 50 total points, according to the following rubric:
  • 0-10 points: A strong thesis statement of the problem, with appropriate evidence to support it
  • 0-10 points: Transcript of semi-structured interview
  • 0-10 points: In-depth analysis of the themes from the interview and how they relate to your problem
  • 0-10 points: Relationship between your local problem and larger global issues
  • 0-5 points: Appropriate use of citations
  • 0-5 points: Appropriately addresses feedback from previous writing assignment

Helpful tips on how to conduct an interview can be found in (Angrosino, Conducting a Life History Interview, 2007)