Researchers structure long interviews in various ways. Super's (1990) Rainbow of Life Roles Inventory is one useful tool for organizing interviews that explore life/career intersections with teachers, teacher educators, and other physical activity professionals. The Rainbow is a paper/pencil advanced organizer shaped like a rainbow with each band representing a designated life role (e.g., parent, worker) and the whole representing birth to death marked by decades. Participants can add life roles by using empty bands of the rainbow (e.g., athlete). Participants indicate when during their lives each role is most to least important by shading more heavily or lightly. Data from two studies will illustrate how the Rainbow can be used to initiate or draw closure to in-depth semi-structured interviews. In both studies, participants prepared a paper/pencil version of the Rainbow before their 2-4-hour interviews. The Rainbow helped participants reflect on their lives/careers prior to and know general topics of the actual interview. The completed Rainbow gave researchers advanced information about participants that allowed particular shaping of interview structures and questions. Multiple data collection methods were used in addition to the long interviews (academic vitae, demographic questionnaires, informal interviews, and sentence stem completions). Data excerpts from both studies will illustrate strengths and weaknesses of the Rainbow. The first study examined connections between the lives and academic careers of 54 women sport pedagogy professors using socialization theory; the Rainbow closed the interviews, allowing participants to explain links among various aspects of their lives and careers. The second phenomenological study examined factors influencing the career trajectories of 10 veteran urban physical education teachers; the Rainbow organized the formal interview to elicit reflections on their career trajectories with particular regard to influences specific to urban settings. Results indicated that Rainbows used at both the beginning and end of long interviews elicited participants' perceptions of links and connections among life and career events in ways that the other open-ended interview questions did not allow; Rainbows also provided detailed information about the impacts of various life roles on each other. When used to structure the long interview, the Rainbow helped build rapport between researcher and participant and facilitated participants making life/career connections throughout the entire interview. Using the Rainbow at the end extracted fewer connections in part because participants were tired. We conclude that the Rainbow best serves long interviews when used as advanced and concurrent organizer for the interview structure.Keyword(s): research, technique, worksite