Interview Strategies in Studies of Women With High Levels of Victimization and Trauma

Especially for women with high prevalence and incidence of victimization and trauma, taking part in a life story interview has potential for positive benefits, but it also may leave the study participants seeing their lives and themselves in a negative light. Study participants were 116 women with repeated criminal convictions and a history of substance misuse. They were from a population known to have high prevalence of victimization of multiple types and exposure to violence. To investigate the effects of telling their life stories and to identify strategies interviewers use to maximize positive and minimize negative effects of the interviews, study participants were asked to reflect on the experience and the effects of telling their stories during an interview. Most participants identified benefits from the experience. Specifically, they felt relief from talking about negative events, they saw growth over stages in their life, they realized how negative past events led to preset positive outcomes, they clarified future steps based on their stories, and they saw how their stories could help other people. Alternatively, more than has been shown in prior research, some interview participants saw themselves as permanently contaminated, and they expressed despair about how their lives turned out. Examination of the dialogue between participants and interviewers revealed how interviewers maximized positive benefits by providing esteem and emotional support, emphasizing the value of the story to other people, and directing attention to the present and the future rather than the past. Findings are relevant to training and application for the widely used method of gathering life stories to understand both victimization and breaking the law. Findings also show the need for future research on positive strategies to use in interviewing other groups with very adverse life experiences, such as combat veterans, transgender individuals, and targets of racial/ethnic discrimination.