Basics of Selecting and Evaluating Narrators in Oral History

Abstract

This paper handles a pivotal question in the oral history approach, that is

the process of selecting and evaluating the narrators. The narrators constitute

the knowledge nerve based on the oral culture. Therefore, this factor

ought to be given the needed attention by the people concerned and involved

in the oral history process.

The paper has dealt with the oral history approach concerning the process

of selecting and evaluating the narrators. The sample size‘ defining criteria

in oral history are determined by many factors most of which are linked

to historical event‘s settings and narrators more than to the researcher‘s

decisions and the scientific determinants adhered to in social and educational

studies. In oral history, the sample size identification is left to the field

work specifications and the emissions of the target group.

The process of evaluating the narrators is connected to two elements: the

first is the narrators themselves and the second is the history researcher.

Narrators are evaluated by presenting them in front of the critical trial that

is administered by the researcher. The researcher, on the other hand, has a

role that is no less than the narrators themselves in the importance of designing

the criteria that are based on the validity of the oral history narratives.