Task 6B Critical Reflection and The Planning of my Inquiry Tools

After Reading reader six i now have a greater knowledge of how important it is, to understand and plan my methods of gathering information, and to make sure it is all relevant to my line of inquiry.

The reader describes to us four different methods which can be used in research to collect information: Interview, Survey, Focus Groups and Observation. Each method having its benefits and limitations.

After a lot of thought and consideration I Believe the methods which i will use during my Inquiry will be Interview, Survey and perhaps Observation, if I am lucky enough to get the opportunity to observe an audition situation.

Interview

One great advantage to the Interviewing tool is that you "can follow up on ideas, probe responses and investigate motives and feelings" (Bell, 2005, p.157) I Believe an interview is a good way of obtaining information or data regarding someones personal thoughts or opinions, and asking open ended questions allows people to elaborate and speak more freely on a subject. Another great advantage to an interview in regards to my inquiry is that it can be conducted over the phone or even on skype. If you are not in the same country as the participant you can still gather your information. This is very important to me as I travel a lot within my career, this is Another reason why I Believe using this tool will benefit my inquiry.

The reader explains to us different interview methods which you could use:

• non directive or open interviews that allow the interviewee to talk about anythinh they like.

I Think this is a great method as it allows people to relax and speak more freely in their interview without the restriction of trying to answer direct questions. However this is not the method i will be using with my Inquiry as it is important to me to keep the interviewee on topic so i can collect relivant information. Instead I shall use this method:

• semi structured interview which includes set questions or themes with the flexibility of following interesting or useful emerging issues is often most appropriate for the work based researcher because of its inherent flexibility.

Please see my previous blog which shows my questions for my semi structured pilot interview!

Focus Groups

This is a tool I don't Believe I will use in my inquiry as I have never conducted a focus Group Before the thought is a Little daunting, although I can see its benefits. The major advantage to focus Groups is that it brings together a Group of people who may have similar characteristics or experience. It can allow more quite or shy participants to tell their story within a supportive Group context, it can also open up issues that individual participants may not have thought of on their own, in turn enhancing the information gathered.
A disadvantage to Focus Groups is that they can be hard to manage and hard to moderate the topic being discussed. As the facilitator you must try and channel the discussion in the correct direction to gather the relevant information. Also you must be aware of strong personalities which may be intimidating other members of the Group and making them feel reserved about sharing their opinion.

Survey

The main advantage to the survey is "the ability to gather data from a wide range of representative respondents." I believe the survey is a method I will use when gathering data for my inquiry. I have conducted surveys before therefor I have a good basic knowledge of how to construct them confidently, and I have come to learn that the importance of a survey lies within its construction.

I have deliberated over the pros and cons of web surveys verses paper surveys and personally i think I will be using paper surveys. Talking to my friend Hannah she told me of an article she found by Denscombe which looks at the differences between an online survey and a paper survey and I found it very interesting. Denscombe discusses that although online surveys are less time consuming, so more user friendly, they are not as reliable as people sometimes leave things out or miss questions.

Although paper surveys are much more time consuming for you the researcher, as you have to hand out and gather back your survey (or have them posted back) from your participants, i feel they are a much more personal approach. With a personal approach I feel people feel more obliged to take the time to fill it out especially if they have met you and spoke to you personally first.

I have conducted a pilot survey which I am going to hand out to several of my professional dancer friends.I have established that my survey must be user friendly so not too long and time consuming, but the appropriate length to provide me with the data I need. Due to the nature of my inquiry I will not be able to do a street or postal survey as i am only targeting a specific group of musical theatre performers, mostly dancers. I will hopefully be able to blog again soon with feedback from my pilot survey!

Observation

Due to the nature of my line of inquiry I don't believe observation is a method I will use very often in my research. However I do believe it is a great tool for gathering and analyzing information, and if I am perhaps lucky enough to be able to sit in and watch an audition taking place i believe i would learn a lot from being on the other side of the panel for a change!

One down fall to using observation as a method is it can be very time consuming because it involves attending the session being observed, and the time needed to analyse and interpret what you have recorded.
Observations can be recorded in many ways, taping or video recording, written notes, but you must always make sure consent forms are signed and confidentiality agreements have been formalised.

With observing, ethics plays a big part and you must make sure you are aware and respond sensitively and appropriately to any ethical issues which may arise.

I will not be conducting a pilot survey for my inquiry, but never say never as I would love to be able to sit in and observe and audition and quiz the casting directors on what exactly it is they are looking for in a dancer when they hold an audition!