ABSTRACT
The validation of oral evidence can be divided into two main areas: the degree to which any individual interview yields reliable information on the historical experience, and the degree to which that individual experience is typical of its time and place. The first part of this paper will look at one or two examples in which individual interviews have been used or interpreted. The major concern, however, is to suggest ways in which simple aggregation can be used to assess validity, for as the data in oral history archives lacks the random quality required for formal statistical validity, some acceptable method of generalising from a number of interviews has to be developed. This need not be merely an exercise in positivistic methodology, but the process of structuring data should be part of the interpretative process and might be used to elucidate some of the wider problems of omission and distortion in oral evidence as they relate to the life-cycle and/or wider cultural events.
