To establish initial rapport between participant and researcher, a 15-minute informal talk was scheduled prior to the administration of the Impact Survey and the QOLI. At this time, researchers posed broad open-ended questions that addressed participants’ life changes and attitude transformations without specifically focusing on their ABLE participation, advanced education, employment, family and/or community activities. Thus, any comments offered on these specific subjects during the interview would be a matter of participants’ choice rather than researchers’ direction. The administration of the formal Impact Survey would provide hard data to compare with participants’ comments. In addition, an examination of participants’ initial Success Stories and follow-up interviews would fill in any gaps in the survey and provide details substantia ting the QOLI.

All interviews were conducted in person. If necessary, the research assistant would read the Impact Survey and the QOLI aloud and answer any questions about word meanings or QOLI instructions posed by participants. We anticipated and indeed obtained partic ipants for this study who were former ESL students, new readers, adults with learning differences, and special education adults. The rationale guiding the person-to-person interviews and the assistance provided in completing the written instruments was to level the playing field.

Interview prompt sheet

After participants completed the consent form, research assistants showed the interviewee his or her Success Story and photograph. Research assistants allowed the participant to look over the story if they wished and then began an informal talk using the following open-ended questions:

• Do you recognize yourself? This story was written quite a while ago. What can you tell me about how your life has changed since this story was written?
• In 19xx (the year they received their award) you were one of the Department of Education’s Success Stories. What do you think makes a person successful?
• Which of your life achievements to date are you most pleased with?
• How do you handle setbacks?
• If you could change anything about yourself or your life, what would it be?
• What goals have you set for the future?
• What help, if any, do you need to reach these goals?
• If you had three magic wishes:

1. What would you wish for yourself?
2. For your family or friends?
3. For all adult students?

None of these questions: referred to gains in education or employment; inquired about children’s education, community activities or leadership positions; probed participant’s attitudes toward adult and literacy education staff or programs or asked about problems, perseverance, or self-esteem. Any answers dealing with these subjects were volunteered by participants “under their own steam.”