Collecting Data with a Human Face

The main purpose of this section is to explain how social scientists connect to people who have been through traumatic events. This article also show the some of the techniques used to get these subjects to open. In the introductory paragraph the author says "although these subjects are reluctant to talk about these events this research is invaluable to researchers". He then explains how he approaches talks to this people. Doing the authors 25 years of talking to these people his techniques has evolved. The first thing he does is he does is ask general questions about their life such religion, family life, and the cities were they grew up these questions are used to get the interviewees to have level of comfort with the interviewer. The next part is a questionnaire which is broken into four different pre traumatic event lives, during traumatic event life, post traumatic life, and later life. The next step is to start to get the pacific's of the traumatic event by asking were it happened and show familiarity with that area to make them more comfortable. The next step is to start to ask about the actually event. This will be the hardest time for the interviewee as they will have to relive this traumatic over in their minds. The interviewer must find away to get these answer from the interviewee while being sympathetic to their needs. In closing the authors says following these steps you will be able to get your research and also keep the person from the pain of the memory