Taks 6b

Interview

Not only does an interview provide a very effective way of collecting data it also provides a great opportunity for self-assessment, which is particularly useful at this stage in my inquiry. Writing the questions and listening to the responses expands your knowledge as a researcher. The responses are instance and interviewing a person who has experience in the subject or situation can provide the researcher with insightful and new information. The face-to-face aspect of the interview allows the interviewer to view the emotional reaction of the person being interview. This really bringing the subject to life and allows the researcher to determent if the person being interviewed is giving a genuine responds.

I found it difficult to keep my interviewee on subject at times and felt that I could be viewed as impolite whilst steering them back. In face-to–face interviews it is important to ensure that the interviewee knows that you are grateful that they are there and that you value their responses.

I recorded my interviewee’s responses by hand. As I did not want to misinterpret or misquote it was a very time consuming process. In fact, I was so concerned that I conveyed her answers correctly and in the tone at which they were meant, that I sent the answers back to her once I have typed them up. Although this was good for clarity, it is not practical on a larger scale and not all participants would be prepared to do this. I will, therefore, record the interview with sound equipment and play back the responses in my own time.

Focus Group

Focus group is an excellent tool because it gives the researcher an opportunity to listen to a whole group of people debating and giving different points of view on a subject.

I managed to organise a group of people that have the same role as me in my workplace. I chose this group as they are not associated with the arts, so they would offer me more varied responds.

What I liked about the tool is that more participants provide responses, through discussions, that are more varied and in-depth that in a single participant interview.

The focus group pilot provided the experience of how to overcome and anticipate possible obstacle that may affect my inquiry. One obstacle that I came across was to find a suitable time and place for everyone to attend my focus group.  It was difficult to arrange a time that was suitable for all participants, which resulted in me having to cancel a number of prior sessions. I must allow for extra time for this in my future planning.

The last interview I conducted was almost four years ago. I couldn’t remember how to use my Dictaphone at the start of the focus group, so used my phone instead. This taught me to prepare equipment in advance, so as not to waste valuable time learning how to operate and retrieve data.

 

Survey and Q

A survey is a useful tool to collect data, but it is essential to design the questions in a way that the participants find easy to answer and for them not be too time consuming.

In order to obtain broad and representative responses, it is important to survey a wide range of people. To achieve this I will need to make contact with other organisation to find relevant group of people to add credibility to my research.

For my questionnaire pilot, I sent a web-based trial to people in my contacts list to view. This resulted in only one person responding, this gave me no comparative data to work.

This experience has emphasised the important of not relying on one method of distributing questionnaires for my enquiry. 

    

Observation

During my observation pilot I found it very tempting to guide the students during abstract painting. This task was intended to see how they responded to art sessions that don’t focus too much on teaching basic painting and drawing techniques, but to allow them to produce work that is solely based on their feelings and emotions. This experience provided me with a good insight on how the students work and cope without too much guidance.

This process reminded that we use observation on a daily bases in our workplace. We observe the student’s behaviour, how they react in different situations and read their body language in order to work out their mood and how we should approach them.  This tool is about being able to read situations and accurately record what we see.

I think the limitations and dangers of observation as a tool, is that people can behave differently when they know that they are been observe - this is especially true of young people. Therefore, recordings can be misleading, providing inaccurate conclusions.