Observation Guidelines - Advice for Interviewing
Site visits and interviews are designed to get you to experience first hand the people and behaviors linked to the Buddhist traditions studied in the course. In SacCT, you will sign up to visit a particular local worship site; you will then then visit the site at the scheduled time, observe participants, and interview one of them to get a sense of what they are thinking. This experience will serve as the foundation for the observation report. Choose a local place of worship
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that you have NOT previously visited yourself and OR known much about from friends or family;
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that is reasonably accessible (see me if you have problems with transportation or commute from a distance);
- whose times of formal worship match your schedule. (I recommend going with at least one classmate, family member or friend.)
NOTE: I strongly recommend that you go with at least one classmate, family member or friend. Though the people in charge of these sites are always welcoming, you should take the same precautions as in any other public place.
IMPORTANT: you must observe one of events listed under Local Sites, not simply visit the site and talk to people. Although you may at other times have interesting informal interactions with community members there, it will be difficult to tell what they normally do when outsiders are not present based exclusively on such interactions.
Advice About Interviewing
If you decide you wish to interview a person you met during your site visit, make sure you have some reliable way to contact them, and that you'll be able to complete the interview at least a few days before the report deadline (see "Timeline"). Feel free to interview a previous acquaintance instead--whether through your family, work, or school (perhaps even this class)--if they are familiar with the site you visited and identify themselves as a member of the religious tradition represented there (vs. simply having Buddhist ancestry). Keep in mind some individuals may protest they don’t know much about the ideas and history of their tradition; you might need to stress that what you want to hear from them is their personal experience.
In preparing for & conducting the interview, keep in mind the following parameters:
- Your interview should ideally be done in person, and last about 45 minutes to a full hour. If you find it difficult to schedule this much time, try to hold two shorter sessions. If there are serious constraints on you and/or your interviewee's schedules and transportation, you may have to conduct the interview by phone. As with the site visit, remember that you are a representative of the Sac State community. Make sure to introduce yourself and tell your interviewee a little bit about the class. Be courteous in speaking with them; be respectful of the person’s time in the way you set up and especially keeping your appointment.
Your first job in the interview is to generate questions, supported by the prompts and examples on the ORW. But just as the questions you come up with before your visit will likely change while you are there, so too the your interview questions will probably expand and/or change as you proceed. Ideally, your interview will be a two-way conversation (admittedly guided by you) between two willing partners rather than the interrogation of subject by a researcher. Although you should have a clear sense of what you want to know, you should also let the person tell their own story in the way they want to tell it. The following suggestions may help you to pose your questions in a flexible and sensitive way:
- start with personal history: were they raised with this tradition, or did they chose it or get drawn to it at some point, and what have been the highlights of their developing relationship with it?
- in your questions make sure to ask the person about their own practice & their own reflection: e.g., urge the person to relate impersonal descriptions of ideas and practices to what they themselves actually do and the communities they are part of, e.g. "that sounds fascinating; I'm wondering what that idea means to you in terms of your daily experience," "to what extent does that type of practice apply to your activities with others?"
- bring up details about some related details that you've encountered in the class readings, and ask whether they think such accounts either differ from or resemble traditions they themselves have experienced or heard about.
- work to pick up on and ask about connections between all the details you hear; for example, if a person mentions an initiation experience you might ask about the extent to which that experience continues to influence them, even if they don't consciously think about it.
- As with the site visit, your other important task will be to record accurately what the person tells you in order to describe the conversation in your write up. If you are able to, you can tape the conversation so you can review the details afterwards. If you can’t get a tape recorder, however--or if you're doing a phone interview and don't have the right set-up to record it--plan to take sketchy notes during the interview and then fill in as many details as you can when it's over. Avoid taking extensive notes during the interview as this will distract from your conversation.
REPEATED CAUTION: Just as in describing your site visit, record your general moods or judgements (e.g., “Mr. Kumar seemed really bored," "I was turned off by his tone of voice,” etc.) later, in a separate place (e.g., section C of the ORW). In recording interview responses, dwell instead on what you actually saw and heard (e.g., “Mr Kumar’s shoulders were slumped forward and his facial expression quite flat," “I was struck by how emphatically he made his statements, as if he were the final authority”).