Documentation
Q. Much of my research is based on semi-structured interviews. How do I reference these in-text so that the reader can distinguish interview refs from book/article refs, for example, if a point has been made by an interviewee as well as in a secondary text? An interview clearly has a different “authority” than a secondary text—how do I best convey this using the Chicago author-date system?
A. CMOS 17.205 shows how to cite interviews in a note or reference list. Since the reference list entry includes the author’s name and a date, it’s simple to form the usual author-date text reference (Smith 2000) from that. Although interviews don’t automatically have less authority than secondary materials, if you wish to distinguish them in short citations, you can do it in any number of ways. If your interviews all specify a month and day, for example, their inclusion would set interviews off from the usual book or article reference, which includes only the year (Jones 1983 vs. Jones, November 27, 1983). Or you could specify in the text that the information is from an interview: “In Davis’s interview with Hamilton (April 23, 1981) . . .” Other possible forms include (Thomas interview 1989) and (Thomas 1989, interview).
