PERSON-IN-CULTURE INTERVIEW

Please advise your interviewees that they are under no obligation to disclose information which they are uncomfortable sharing. In addition, please feel free to add to the list of questions.

1.What are the most enjoyable activities in your life?What types of activities, interactions, and thoughts are most rewarding?

2.What are the most enjoyable activities for the other members of your family?Are there different activities, interactions, and thoughts that are most rewarding?

3.In general, what types of experiences are particularly painful for you?

4.What types of experiences are particularly painful for the other members of your family?

5.Describe your most embarrassing experience in the past year and in your life, or describe what might be an embarrassing situation.

6.What kind of things make you angry? Or how would someone be able to tell that you are angry?

7.How do the different members of your family express anger?

8.Do you have enough money to eat well?

9.Does your family have enough money to eat well?

10.Do you feel safe where you live?

11.Does your family feel safe where they live?

12.Name situations in which you feel safe.

13.What about the rest of the family?What types of things make them feel safe?

14.What types of things make you feel important?

15.How do the people in your family get that feeling of importance and self-esteem?

16.What types of things make you feel that you are living life to the fullest?

17.If you “fit in” at home and in your community, tell what a normal day would be like.What type of normal day are you striving for?

PERSON-IN-CULTURE INTERVIEW continued…

18.Each little community has certain images of a successful person.In what ways would your community judge you to be successful or unsuccessful?

19.Draw me a “psychological map” of where you are in the center of the universe.Who are the people closest to you (psychologically)?Who are the people most distant from you?Draw a straight line between you and each person with whom you have good communication.Draw a dotted line between you and the people in your map with whom you have dysfunctional, aversive, or strained communications.Draw a zigzag line between you and those people with whom communication is infrequent.

20.Draw me a totem pole of the important people in your life.Put the weakest person on the bottom.Put the most powerful person on the top.Pretend the totem pole is 100 feet high and people can be placed on any of 100 steps–each one foot higher than the next.People can share “steps” on the totem pole.Be sure to include yourself and anyone in the community or elsewhere who is very important in your life.

21.What are your religious beliefs?

22.On a day-to-day basis, how do you learn new things?Who gives you new information?How do you go about learning new information?

23.What are your feelings about death?

24.How can your life be more meaningful?

25.What types of things do you feel you are responsible for on a day-to-day basis as a human being?What types of things do you feel your family is responsible for?What types of things do you think your society/community is responsible for?

NOTE:The philosophy behind the interview format is that there are basic needs in all human beings and that the method by which those needs are met is culturally derived.When one asks about basic drives, culturally relevant issues are likely to emerge.

Information shared during this interview should be kept confidential.For oral &/or written reports, please use aliases, and generic information pertaining to location, schools, etc.