Why and When to Use This Strategy

Make meaningful progress toward your Integrated Plan

The purpose of empathy interviews

Interviews can serve as a tool to empathize during human-centered liberatory design, continuous improvement and other similar processes. Purposeful, focused questions can help program designers, educators and community leaders understand perspectives by drawing out insightful stories.

Intimately understanding the experiences of students, families and community members will lead to stronger community-driven educational programming and services. Among other outcomes, interviews might discover student or community needs that demand attention, help educators learn about root causes of problems, and surface community priorities.

Who should conduct empathy interviews?

Those most comfortable connecting with families should conduct empathy interviews. District office staff, community liaisons, community engagement team members and teachers are all likely candidates.

When possible, consider an interviewer who already has a trusting relationship with an interviewee. Consider the following as you put your interview team together.

Inviting community ownership: As your district strives to move along ODE’s community engagement spectrum toward community ownership in design processes, consider partnering with students, parents, community-based organizations, and others to collect qualitative data through empathy interviews

Compensation and incentives: If someone is going above and beyond their typical role, consider ways you can express gratitude. Based on what your district policy will allow, try offering incentives such as gas or grocery cards to community partners, extra duty to staff, or other forms of appreciation.

Language access: If possible, the interviewer and notetaker should speak the same language as the person being interviewed. It can be challenging to have an honest and intimate conversation through interpretation. When that is not an option, follow the tips on page 5 to ensure successful interpretation.

Note Taking: Consider assigning a notetaker who can accompany the interviewer, while being mindful of potential power dynamics. Accurate notes can mitigate against an interviewer’s biased memory.

The interviewer can also use an audio recorder, such as Otter, to automatically transcribe the interview. This strategy can be helpful to alleviate a power imbalance caused by multiple interviewers. Be sure to explain the purpose and obtain consent before recording.

Interviewer competencies: Interview teams should be trained and have opportunities to practice, connect and reflect with each other before, during and after the process. They should be skilled at navigating cultural and racial nuance, listening, noticing nonverbal cues, and shifting strategies in the moment based on social awareness.