INHE 2003 Week 9 Interview Write-Up Example

Reconciling With a Brother, Letting Old Work Friends Go: An Interview Write-Up With a Retiree in His Seventies, From Consent Note and Eight Planned Questions to Paraphrased Answers Read Through Erikson's Integrity Versus Despair and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Student Name

Walden University

INHE 2003: Human Development

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Reconciling With a Brother, Letting Old Work Friends Go: An Interview Write-Up With a Retiree in His Seventies, From Consent Note and Eight Planned Questions to Paraphrased Answers Read Through Erikson's Integrity Versus Despair and Socioemotional Selectivity Theory

Consent Note

The interviewee agreed to a one-hour conversation and to its use in this coursework, after hearing what the assignment involved. His name and identifying details have been changed, and some details are composite. He is referred to here as Mr. Hale, a 74-year-old retired high school shop teacher, widowed, with two adult children.

Interview Plan

Eight open questions were prepared in advance:

1. How would you describe your life now, compared with ten years ago?

2. What did your work mean to you, and what do you miss about it, if anything?

3. Who are the people you spend the most time with now?

4. Have any of your friendships changed since you retired?

5. Is there a relationship you have worked to repair, or wish you could?

6. Looking back, is there anything you regret?

7. What matters most to you these days?

8. What would you want a younger person to understand about getting older?

Responses

Mr. Hale described his life now as "smaller but fuller." He taught for 34 years and said he misses the students but not the faculty meetings. He spends most of his time with his daughter's family, who live nearby, and with two old friends from his church.

Asked about friendships, he said he has let several friendships from work "drift," and that he does not mind: "We had the school in common, and when that was gone, there wasn't much to talk about." Asked about repair, he described reconciling with his younger brother after fifteen years of not speaking over a dispute about their mother's care. He called his brother after his wife died, and they now talk every Sunday. "I wasn't going to waste whatever time we've got left being right," he said. He named one regret, not taking more time off when his children were young. Asked what matters most, he said his grandchildren and "keeping things simple." His advice to younger people was to "decide who your people are, and spend your time on them."

Analysis

Erikson (1963) described late adulthood as the period of integrity versus despair. Integrity involves accepting one's life as it was lived, with its successes and failures, and a sense that it had meaning; despair involves regret that life cannot be relived and fear of death. Mr. Hale's account leans toward integrity. He names a regret without dwelling on it, describes his life as fuller even as it has become smaller, and has acted to repair a relationship rather than let it end in bitterness. His reconciliation with his brother, in particular, reads as a step toward integrity: he chose acceptance over being right.

Socioemotional selectivity theory adds a second explanation. Carstensen et al. (1999) proposed that how people perceive their remaining time shapes which social goals they pursue. When time feels open-ended, people seek new information and broad networks; when time feels limited, they prioritize emotionally meaningful relationships and let less meaningful ones go. Mr. Hale's account fits this closely. He let work friendships drift, keeps a small circle of family and close friends, and explained his reconciliation in terms of "whatever time we've got left." The theory treats this narrowing as a choice that tends to support emotional well-being, not as loss. The course textbook presents both perspectives in its discussion of late adulthood (Lally & Valentine-French, 2019).

What the Interview Did Well

The questions were open, so Mr. Hale chose what to talk about, and several of his most revealing answers, such as the reason he called his brother, came without prompting. Paraphrasing his answers in order, with only short quotations, kept the write-up close to what he said while protecting his privacy. The interviewer also avoided suggesting the theories' ideas during the conversation, which reduces the chance that his answers simply echoed them.

Limits

This is one interview with one person, partly composite, so it illustrates the two theories rather than testing them. Mr. Hale may have presented his life more positively to a student interviewer than he would to a close friend. The questions also invited reflection on relationships and regret, which may have drawn out the themes the theories describe. A second interview, or a conversation with his daughter, would give a fuller picture, and asking about the years just after his wife's death would show how the change began.

References

Carstensen, L. L., Isaacowitz, D. M., & Charles, S. T. (1999). Taking time seriously: A theory of socioemotional selectivity. American Psychologist, 54(3), 165-181. https://doi.org/10.1037/0003-066X.54.3.165

Erikson, E. H. (1963). Childhood and society (2nd ed.). W. W. Norton.

Lally, M., & Valentine-French, S. (2019). Lifespan development: A psychological perspective (2nd ed.). College of the Canyons.