Social History in interview: “Is this needed?” (Imelda Victoria)

Human’s life moving gradually. From embryo -> born as baby -> child -> adolescence -> young adult -> middle adult -> late adult. To be able to be adult, of course we must have passed childhood and adolescence stage before, in other words, we should passed one stage before we want to go further into the next stage.Our childhood experience form our adolescence self, our adolescents experience form our adult self, and so on. Therefore our existence right now was a product of our life history.

Interview is used for finding information and the main problem of a person who got interviewed (interviewee). When finding it, there’s a possibility for us to be misled. What i mean by misled is, both our focus and attention stuck on the person’s problem only. Sometimes we need to think, are a problematic person become problematic because of their problem right then? or is there any event in their life experience that lead them into their problem? It’s a worse thing to see a client or interviewee only by their problem. Because if we only focus on the problem, we won’t see a simple little things that might be a clue for the true answer which we need and want to know, an answer that somehow solve the puzzle. This is social history’s role in interview.

We need to know more about the client/ interviewee’s life event. What they are before and what they are now. Especially in child clinical psychology, these were a very crucial things. Their developmental record is a must, since most of child’s problem was about their developmental stage. But, in case of adult this isn’t so necessary like the child’s case. We need to check their past, their experience, their background, and their family, but not their detailed developmental record (because it has been too long and the interviewee might forgot it). Social history of interviewee/client which need to be found in adult’s case were about the situation and condition that lead them into their problem.  We mustn’t concern more about their experience which not related to the problem. 5 W + 1 H, a question format which will be used for asking the client/ interviewee’s problem. What, Where, Why, Who, When, and How. What  happen to them, so they become like that? Who are the people that present in their life? Where the event occur? When is the event occured? How long? Why their life become like this? And we find the answer of these question by asking their social history. There are a lot of information that we, as an interviewer, need to obtain. But among those information, family history, educational history, occupational history, marital history, interpersonal relationship, recreational preferences, sexual history, medical history, psychiatryc history, legal history, alcohol and substance use/abuse; need to be found.

In occupational history, we might get some trouble if  we are interviewing jobless interviewee. A question about their JOB might offend them, so instead of asking it directly, it’s more polite to ask “what is your daily activities right now?” as what Mrs Henny taught us. And about marital history, i’ve experienced this directly. Interviewing unmarried person sure is hard, especially if we are going to interview an unmarried women. No way, we ask “Did you married?” or “why you didn’t married” because those kind of question somehow hurt their pride. It’s better to ask them with a question like “What are your status right now?” “What make you remain with your status right now?”. Another history which hard to ask is about sexual history. It’s so intimate and a  client/ interviewee’s privacy. Maybe, trying to ask their interest or their view in sexual might help.

That’s all about social history in interviewing. We need to note about interviewee’s life record and social history, but we must remember that every person have their own privacy. Value that privacy on the top of everything! We maybe want to know it. But as a reminder for us, we sometimes need to ask ourselves “is this needed?”

30 Maret 2013