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Qualitative analysis of a birth interview

Designed by Holly High and Ryan Schram

Due: September 11 at 5:00 PM
Weight: 20%
Length: 1000 words

Objective

Find out about your birth story and make an argument for what it reveals about the particularities of the time, place, social setting, and cultural context into which you were born.

Preparation

To prepare to interview someone about your own birth, read this article (assigned in Week 2) by Barbara Behrmann (2003):

Behrmann, Barbara L. 2003. “Uncovering Your Own Birth History.” The Journal of Perinatal Education 12 (4). https://doi.org/10.1624/105812403X107008.

It is available in the class ereserve list and through the library catalogue.

Please follow her advice about listening actively and reflectively, asking open-ended questions, using follow-up questions, and using tact and judgment.

Instructions

First, interview someone authoritative about your birth. This could be your mother or someone else who is accessible to you who knows what went down when you were born. When you interview someone, record the interview and make notes on it later, or make notes during the interview to help you remember all of the story as it is told to you. (Or, better yet, do both.)

Second, think about the report of your birth as qualitative data on your culture’s practice of pregnancy and birth. What does this aspect of your culture tell you about the culture as a whole and its values and assumptions about people?

Third, write an essay that makes an argument for your conclusion about your culture based on the qualitative information in your interview. In your argument, summarize the story in full, and use the details that you think are the most telling clues about your own culture to support your claim. When you present details of the story as evidence for your claim, explain your reasons why these specific details lead you to a larger conclusion about your culture.

You are not required to cite a minimum number of sources, or to find sources besides the readings assigned in this class. If you want to discuss ideas and information found in these readings or in other sources, you can and should cite them in the text and include a list of references at the end of your essay. The writings by Davis-Floyd (1994) and Shostak ([1982] 2000), for instance, will be very useful for helping you to think about your interpretation of your birth story as an illustration of your culture’s values. No specific referencing system is required. Ryan prepared the class materials (and this page) using the “Chicago author-date” system. Holly recommends that students learn to use the “Harvard” system.

Keep in mind, though, that this is not a research essay and you will not be graded on your library research skills in this assignment. Your main job is to make an argument for your interpretation of your birth story as ethnographic evidence of your culture.

A word on privacy and confidentiality

Writing assignments and other assessments are graded anonymously. You should not put your name on your submission (but see below for instructions on formatting). References about time and place of birth are fine because we, your graders, generally don’t know such details about students.

We understand that this topic can tread into territory that you or others want to keep private. We will treat these documents as confidential (and the university’s IT systems are fairly secure too). When you write, you may want to think carefully about what you disclose about the person you interview or the people in the story. Like an ethnographer, you can omit identifying details like names, places, and exact dates that are not relevant to your analysis, and talk about the case in general terms (e.g. “an inner-city suburban hospital of Sydney” instead of “Royal Prince Albert Hospital”).

And if you can’t interview anyone…

Also, if you are having trouble with the interview or if there is no one you can interview about your own birth, talk to your tutor about an alternative focus for the paper, e.g. an interview with a friend’s mother about their birth.

Grading criteria

First off, we will not grade your essay on the content of your birth story. We want to see how well you are able to think about birth (hopefully your own) in terms of its cultural context. Your essay will be graded out of 100 possible points on how it measures up on several different aspects:

• Do you have a single, clear claim about what you conclude from your birth story about the larger cultural context in which you were born?
• Do you use information from your birth story as evidence to support a point you make, and your overall claim?
• Do you explain the reasons why specific information you learned in your birth interview leads you to a larger conclusion?
• Do you describe your birth story in enough descriptive detail for your reader to understand how you arrive at your conclusion?
• Is your prose clear and readable?
• Are your paragraphs coherent, that is, does each focus on one main point or topic?
• Is the order of topics clear to a reader and does it help lead to your conclusion?
• Has the paper been proofread for clarity, spelling, and grammar?
• If you do refer to other sources, do you have correct in-text citations and a list of references at the end of the essay?

Longer is not better. Remember that this is an interpretation of a limited (but potentially very revealing) piece of information, and so you only need to make a limited conclusion about one aspect of your culture. Keep within 10% of the word limit, and if you find your first draft is much longer than 1000 words, revise it and ask yourself how much you need to say to support your main claim.

Formatting and software requirements

For a description of the required appearance and file format of your essay, see the page Formatting and software requirements.

References

Behrmann, Barbara L. 2003. “Uncovering Your Own Birth History.” The Journal of Perinatal Education 12 (4). doi:10.1624/105812403X107008.

Davis-Floyd, Robbie E. 1994. “The Ritual of Hospital Birth in America.” In Conformity and Conflict: Readings in Cultural Anthropology, edited by James Spradley, 323–40. New York: HarperCollins Publishers Ltd.

Shostak, Marjorie. (1982) 2000. Nisa: The Life and Words of a !Kung Woman. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.