Since many of you will be conducting interviews (oral histories) during your research, here are some resources to help you get started. Whenever you do research with human participants, you must go through a process to ensure that you are not harming your human subjects in any way (this includes how you handle private or sensitive personal information). This process is overseen by the Institutional Review Board, or IRB, on each campus. As of January 2018, oral histories and journalism interviews will no longer be subject to IRB approval, because they aren’t doing the same types of research that fields like medicine, psychology, etc. are doing–research that could lead to serious physical or mental harm. If you’re talking to people about topics they really want to talk to you about, then you are in the clear…after January 2018. Since our research occurs before then, we are going to have to double check with our campus IRBs before proceeding to interviews.
What is all this IRB stuff, and why does it matter? “Oral History, Human Subjects, and Institutional Review Boards” will help demystify the process.
Principles and Best Practices for Oral History–The Oral History Association’s guide on interviewing people in the course of your research
Oral History Consent Form (download a copy from our course Google Drive). Use this to help make sure you gain documented consent from each of the people you interview.
Oral-History-Consent-Form_Conflict in America
Campus-specific IRB websites:
Keene State
Mansfield University
MCLA
UIS
UMW
Abriana’s Resources from YouTube!