The purpose of this assignment is to have you learn more about adulthood by interviewing a person who is 40 years of age or older. It will be necessary for you to identify the specific goal(s) of your interview (i.e., what you hope to learn and why), develop the series of questions you will ask, summarize the middle-aged adult's responses, discuss what you learned from the interview, and explain how this is related to the information presented in the course text and posted presentations.
The topic(s) and nature of the interview are up to you, but there are a few guidelines. First, I would prefer that you focus on one (or more) of the more prominent topics of this stage, such as: generativity, marital satisfaction, launching and empty nest stages of the family life cycle, mortality, crisis, the influence on development of personal perception, physical decline, health and well-being, exercise, etc. Of course you have the option of choosing a topic (or topics) not listed here, but it/they must be tied to what you're learning from this course about this stage.
Second, you must plan your interview beforehand and write out your questions before you meet with the person you will be interviewing. Third, you must record (either in writing or using a tape recorder) your interview so that you will have a record of it to work from in writing your paper. Ideally, your interview will occur face-to-face as you are likely to be asking questions about issues that may be very personal, and you will be asking your interviewee to take you seriously and share their insights and their lives with you.
The paper you write must be no longer than 3 pages, typewritten, with 1-inch margins top, bottom and sides, 12-point font, double-spaced. It should contain the following:
1] a summary of your goals (identify the topic of interest and explain what you hoped to accomplish with your interview);
2] a brief description of the person you interviewed and the interview session (including the person's age, sex, marital status, relation to you, any other information about them that is pertinent to the interview, as well as time, place and duration of the interview);
3] a summary of the information gathered from the interview--I don't want a transcript! I want your summary of what this person shared with you about his/her life in response to your questions;
4] an explanation of what you learned from this; and
5] a consideration of how this (what you learned from the interview) fits with what you've learned from the course textbook and relevant posted presentations on physical, cognitive and psychosocial development during adulthood.
Finally, I also want to see a list of the questions you asked as part of your interview. This does not count toward the 3-page limit--just tack the questions on to the end of your paper. You are welcome to use headings in your paper to make clear which section of the paper contains which of the required information.
You may submit your assignment by pasting directly into the text box, or by attaching a Word file. Note that if you choose to attach a file, it MUST be a Microsoft Word file. Also please note that many of these assignments will be graded by the teaching assistant for this class, Chelsea Gourley.
Please be aware that the assignment you submit will be filtered through plagiarism software. This software will evaluate your assignment by comparing it to everything available on the internet and every other student assignment that has been evaluated through this software. As such, once your assignment has been submitted, your work will become part of the database future papers will be evaluated against.
What this means is that it is very important that you turn in your own work. Copying from the internet will lead to problems, as will turning in another student's assignment from a previous semester. Additionally, should you give your work to another student to turn in, that would be flagged as well.