By David Morgan, Ph.D.

Interviews may be conducted with single informants or in small groups.  You may also wish to develop this set of questions into a formal survey instrument with four or five stated responses to each question for respondents to select from.  This is advisable if you intend to gather information from a very large number of informants who would be difficult to interview individually.

A note about ethnography: asking people directly what something means is often not the best way to gather information, particularly when studying common objects like pictures on the wall of the home or church/temple fellowship hall.  More helpful are the stories people tell or have heard about the images, the jokes or comments or complaints they have, accounts about who likes the image and who doesn’t. Asking informants to write their responses is helpful for gathering and preserving their actual language for later study.  The terms and expressions that they choose to use as they tell stories or discuss pictures are themselves valuable forms of evidence.  As important as the image is what a believer does with it.  This is called a “visual practice,” and can tell you a great deal about what an image means and how it holds religious significance.

The following information is helpful to gather in order to establish a profile of the respondents.  Preserving each respondent’s anonymity is important.  When you present your findings verbally or in writing, Individual responses should be referred to by the “informant number” or by an assigned alias in order to preserve respondents’ anonymity.

Age

Gender

Ethnicity

Length of membership in the congregation

Length of residence in the local community

Date of interview

Informant number

1. What are the pictures in your home, in church, at work, or that you carry with you that you have possessed for a long time and would not wish to lose?
   
2. Where did these images come from and how long have they been where you view them?
   
3. Do these images offer anything to your religious life?  For instance, do they have value in teaching, in family or personal devotions, in public worship, in the study of sacred scriptures, in prayer, in the conduct of family or congregational life?
   
4. What kinds of images are in your church or temple?  Where are they located?  Why are they located in that place?  Have they always been there?  Do they serve a particular purpose in that location?  Would you like to see them removed, replaced, or remain where they are?
   
5. Why are particular images displayed in the way they are?  What does and image’s arrangement and placement mean?  Who is meant to see it and on what occasions? 
   
6. What is the subject matter of the images?  Why do you think the subject is used in a given picture and why is that subject used in your church, temple, or home?
   
7. What do the particular images make you think of when you see them?  Have you heard stories told about them or what they mean?  Who told those stories and on what occasion?