Looking at the four different methods of enquiry I feel that
they are all of equal importance and that they all bring different information
to the table, I feel I just need to fine tune the ways that a go about these
research methods to get the best results for me.
The pilot
interview worked well for me as I got detailed information on the questions
that I asked and I was able to expand on these questions to go deeper into my
topic and onto areas I did not first think about, which also got me thinking,
so in the end it turned into more of a discussion between two people than an
interview.I feel a down side of this is the fact that it is a time consuming
research method with vast amounts of information that I may not be able to
fully evalutate to my full advantage. For example if I was to interview a large
number of people to get an average answer to some of my questions, not only would
the interviews themselves take up a lot of time, but also the write up to try
and group together everyones answers so that I could come up with an average
belief of the group I am looking at.On reflection I still intend to use this
research method for my inquiry, I feel I will use it to interview teachers as
these are more singular than say a group of parents, I feel I need to interview
teachers also as I shall be asking them different questions to that of parents.
At first I had
been struggling to see the positives of the pilot survey, just because it had
such a low responsive rate, like any questionnaire it is difficult to get
people to respond if they think it is not of importance to them, in my personal
opinion I also feel it had a lower response rate as mine I just sent out via
the internet through emails and links to it, I never printed any out and gave
it out by hand (the old fashioned way) I feel that maybe if I gave it out in
person I may have got a better response as it may have had a more personal
touch than just something that comes into your inbox and is easily deleted. However
having said this I do feel there are lots of benefits of a survey as it’s a great
way to get a large amount of research it is a fast and efficient way of getting
my research questions to a large number of people.I feel to improve my way of
doing this research I firstly need to fine tune my survey as having not done
one before there is definatley room for improvement, I feel I need to not just
ask the questions I am researching about but also gain information on the
person that is answering my questions so that I can summaries then general
results of my survey. I would also like to give some out by hand I would
probably do this during dance classes when parents are sitting in the waiting
room, so that it is the perfect time for them to take some time to fill it out
when they are not pre occupied with something else.
With the
focus group I used my linkedin SIG group
I found this group useful over the past few weeks as its
active at every hour of the day so if you can’t access a conversation at a
certain time you can put your viewpoint across whenever it works for you, its
been a great place to voice ideas with like minded people. However for focused
research I feel it could have a down fall of the discussions going off on a
tangent without me having access to in 24 hours a day the discussion could
easily go off track from my research to a completely different area. To improve
this if I intend to continue to use my SIG as a focus group I would list some
guidelines of discussion to help keep my research on track. Or I would try and organize
exact times for us all to discuss together and have a gatekeeper to make sure
the conversation stays on topic.
Out of all
the research I feel I got the most information from my pilot observation, in
reflection I think I feel this because the research was in my hands and my
hands only so I could put my full effort into it and know that I am getting the
best results that I can, it was good to sit in the environment myself and
document exactly what I saw, However a downfall of this could be the people I am
actually observing as even though it is me carrying out the research the
children could react in different ways because I am there and they are not used
to another person watching the class. A way I intend to improve this method of
research is by continuing to do practicing observations so that the children
become used to my presents in the classroom.
In
conclusion a feel that carrying out these pilot surveys has been a great help
in forwarding me towards my research inquiry, each method has unlocked a
different area for my to research which if I group all the information I gather
together I will have a fully rounded research result.
I agree that it is a struggle to evaluate the findings of an interview in a appropriate way, that shows your findings accurately and with the most beneficial structure. When statistics are put forward it always seems so much more realistic however I’m struggling to ask the right questions in the survey to get the statistics. As with most things it’s all trial and error.
ReplyDelete