Linda Shopes summarized it this way, "oral history might be understood as a self conscious, disciplined conversation between two people about some aspect of the past considered by them to be of histrical significance and intentionally recorded for the record. Although the conversation takes the form of an interview, in which one person-the interviewer- asks the questions of another person- variously referred to as the interviewee or narrator--oral history is, at its heart, a dialogue."
Shopes continues to explain the best interview techniques, what to exclude and include. She adds "the best interviews have a measured, thinking out loud quality, as perceptive questions work and rework a particular topic, encouraging the narrator to remember details, seeking to clarify that which is muddled, making connections among seemingly disconnected recollections, challenging contradictions, evoking assessments of what it all meant then and what it means now." She continues by addressing that the interviewers should carefully listen to waht the narrator says and what the narrator is trying to get you to think.
Interviews show shifts in power through marriages, unemployment, employment for women, and a change in the way people raise their children. It "opens up new views of the past." Other interview topics contain events, like cherished memories, a tour to Iraq, a valued job.