Alys May-James BA Professional Practice Blog

Last week we had a zoom call about how to conduct interviews. Here are a few of the main point I picked up from the discussion. Be open and receptive. Create space for your participants so they can open up about what they want to talk about. Don’t go in with a fixed idea about what you want to find. Let the data you collect speak for itself. You don’t need to include all the information you collect from your interviews. Be selective. Use open questions to allow for further discussion, rather than yes or no answers. Start with an easy question to break the ice. Be an active listener. E.g. Nod, comment on what the participants are saying. Respect everyone’s opinion, even if you don’t agree. Don’t let your own opinions get in the way of the data. Be aware of your own bias and question it. I hope this helps people to carry out their research!

The last few months I have been collecting my data on the use of touch and dance ready for analysis. I decided to use thematic analysis with triangulation to find the common, emerging themes across my data. Having found several themes through my literature research, my interviews and my own experiences, I decided to start mapping out these themes. However, when it came to writing them in my research report I was struggling with how to structure my findings. I felt like I had gathered so much information but I didn't know what to do with it once I'd analysed it. Below is a video that I found really helpful for the layout and structure on presenting my themes in my research report.   Here are some of the main points I have taken away from this video: Be clear  State what the research is about and then explain the themes that have come from the research.  It is personal preference how you lay out your findings  Separate your themes into different sections...

This week I joined a discussion skype about interviews with other module 2 and 3 students. It was a good opportunity to see the perspectives of interviews from the different modules. Something that I found interesting from this session is that it isn’t about getting an answer. We can plan our inquiry into the ground but the reality is, we don’t know what we are going to find and what data we will collect. We do not have control over everything. This means that some of the thoughts we had planned may not work for the data we received… and that is ok. Things change, we don’t always have control and that is ok. What this does, is give us an opportunity to look at ourselves and question why we thought certain things, why did we make those assumptions or have that bias? It gives us a way to learn more about ourselves and to push our own boundaries. Qualitative data is very different from quantitative data regarding what information is collected. With qualitative data the researcher is ...