Trajectories of Risk: Mapping Safety, Health, and Risk at Hanford

Share Your Story

Any Hanford worker or citizen of a neighboring (or downwind) community is welcome to participate in this oral history project. We are committed to preserving the history of the experiences of individuals who voiced concerns about safety, health or risk and to preserving the history of efforts to improve safety, health, and risk at Hanford in any era. Everyone is welcome to participate. All volunteers will have the opportunity to be interviewed regardless of race, gender, ethnicity, or occupation. If you have questions, please contact us at 509-335-4191 or email at XXXXXX.

As a potential participant in the Trajectories of Risk project, you may be curious about what is involved with being interviewed. 
Here is an overview of the process:

Step 1: Complete the questionnaire

We ask that all participants complete one of two questionnaires: the Employee/Former Employee Questionnaire or the Citizen Questionnaire. These questionnaires provide us with basic biographical data and information, and provide some in-depth information about your experiences. These questionnaires help us perform the necessary research in preparation for your interview. All of your personal contact information will be held in the strictest confidence, as described in our privacy policy. 


Step 2: Schedule an interview

Once we receive your questionnaire, we will review it and enter your information into our participant database. As we have many individuals in the interview queue, it may take us several weeks to contact you to schedule an interview date and time. Rest assured that we will contact you as soon as possible. If you are concerned that we may not have received your information, you are welcome to contact us by phone or email (see contact information above) for a quick follow-up. Depending on your location, we can conduct interviews in person, over the phone, or by an internet video technology (for example, Skype or Facetime). We can meet in person if you are near the Tri-Cities, Pullman or elsewhere in Washington.


Step 3: Complete and sign the Interview Agreement

Before the interview, we will ask that you sign an Interview Agreement. The act of creating an oral history interview automatically creates complimentary copyright. As a result, both the interviewer and the interviewee/narrator must sign an agreement releasing their copyright control of the interview to the Risk Trajectories archive at Washington State University. If an agreement is not signed, we cannot make the interview recordings or transcripts available to students, scholars, and the general public. The Interview Agreement is not intended to restrict your rights to your own story and is not designed to prevent you from selling books, articles, or the movie rights to your story if you so desire. The agreement simply allows for public access to your interview and states that both the interviewee and the interviewer understand various libel issues.

Step 4: Complete the interview

The purpose of conducting the interview is to preserve a historical record of your experiences raising concerns about safety, health, or environmental risks at Hanford. The length of the interview varies from person to person. We pledge to allow each individual the time he/she needs to relate their story. We will guide you through the interview with questions in a professional manner and allow you the opportunity to answer in any way and at length. The interviews are uncensored, unedited, and are designed to be as authentic a rendering of the narrator's experience as possible. Our interviews typically cover a wide range of topics and time.  We will not discuss any topic about which you do not feel comfortable talking.

All interviews are digitally recorded using our digital audio recorder and sometimes on video when the situation warrants. Recordings are transcribed and both recordings and transcripts will be made available to students, scholars, and the general public at the Risk Narratives Archive in Pullman, Washington, as well as on the Internet through the Risk Narratives Archive.


Step 5: Review the transcription

After conducting the interview we will create a transcript of the interview which will be sent to you for review. The purpose for your review of the transcript is to allow you the opportunity to correct names of people and places, and to correct dates and other factual information as necessary. Since the purpose of the transcript is to convey as closely as possible the tone, nature, and content of the oral interview, we avoid editing transcripts for grammar, syntax, or other esthetic reasons. You are also encouraged at this point to make any additions to the transcript as you see fit. We will indicate that these comments came after the original audio interview. We will give the transcript and audio a final review before depositing it into your collection at the Risk Narratives Archive and posting it online in the Risk Narratives Archive.

Questionnaires

If you would like to participate in the Vietnam Archive Oral History Project, please select and complete the questionnaires below, and send them to the Vietnam Archive. If you download the questionnaires, please feel free to send them as an email attachment to XXXXX, or by regular mail to:


 

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