Context: I am the director of a summer camp called StoryArts and this week happened to be our journalism week, so I ended up using one of our camp interviews. The goal of the interview was to interview a small group of my campers — B, who is 14, C who is 12, and T, who is 10 — and talk about what their dream job was when they were in third grade.The following is a transcript of a small section of the group interview, which was conducted on Zoom over the course of about an hour and a half. For the protection of my campers, who are all minors, their names have been shortened to initials and any identifying information has been removed.

 

Sophie: So, you wanted to be a train conductor?

B: Yeah, I thought trains were neat.

T: Like Thomas the Train Engine?

B: I was too old for Thomas the Train, I just wanted to be a conductor!

Sophie: What type of train did you want to conduct?

B: I don’t know, a train train?

Sophie: I mean, would you use the train for tourism? Would you transport goods? What was third grade B thinking?

B: Oh, hmm, maybe a tourist train would be fun! Or, I’d just ride it around for fun.

C: If I bought a train, I’d just sell it.

Sophie: But think of how much money you’d make if you sold tickets to the train instead! T, would you sell the train?

T: I’d make it an anime train! With Naruto! And tickets would be $300!

C: No one would buy $300 tickets for a train!

Sophie: B, would you sell $300 tickets?

B: Uhhh, I just want to conduct the train!

Sophie: C, I think you’re gonna have to be the business manager for the StoryArts train company!

C: We’re going to make so much money.

Sophie: What’s your business plan?

C: $20 tickets, and there’ll be lots of snacks.

Sophie: What types of snacks will sell well?

C: Hot cheetos obviously, and Doritos, and –

[crackling noise from T, who forgot to mute]

Sophie: T, can you mute for a second?

T: Sorry!

Sophie: No worries. C, will the train have any sweet treats?

C: Fresh brownies!

B: Which I — the conductor — get for free. 

C: Yeah, sure.

T: What about r a m e n?

Sophie: Why do you wanna sell ramen, T? Wouldn’t it spill once the train got moving?

T: Because Naruto loves ramen.

Sophie: How will you keep it from spilling?

B: On my train all the tables are bolted down! And they have a cup holder but for soup.

Sophie: Ok so, C is our business manager, B is our conductor, and T is our creative director. T, as creative director, what should the train company be called?

T: Uhhhhhhhhh,,,,,Noodle Train!

Reflection:

This was my first group interview, as well as my first time interviewing participants who were significantly younger than me, and my attempts at keeping the interview semi-structured ultimately were largely unsuccessful — keeping a conversation on track is nearly impossible with middle schoolers, and I quickly found that the conversation would be more interesting if I rolled with their interests rather than trying to guide them through mine. My partner, Molly, said I did a  good job with my questions, but I’m still left with the question of if there was a stricter goal for my interview, and my participant has other ideas, how do I keep the conversation of being derailed? Although Molly assures me otherwise, I was concerned that I accidentally ended up favoring one participant over the others, directing more comments and questions to them than the others. I imagine that this is a common issue in group interviews, and I wonder what strategies exist to prevent it. What I tried to do is to bring in the other participants by asking them directly to react to what had been said, which can be awkward but was an easy way to encourage them all to participate. 

More generally, I found that interviewing kids was much more fun than interviewing adults, because the campers were much more willing to explore hypothetical situations and to interact with each other. I think as adults, we tend to be a little more uncomfortable on Zoom and the questions of when it’s appropriate to interject or interrupt, and that makes virtual conversations a little more stilted. With the kids, there was a lot more talking over each other, which sounds like a bad thing, but in reality made for a very lively conversation. These observations however are based on my experiences in seminar-style classes with other adults and not necessarily group interviews, so that’s a comparison I’d like to make in the future.