Module 2 Skype Session 17/11/18

Yesterday I joined a Skype session with Adesola and a couple of others from Module Two. It was really useful and opened my eyes to things I hadn’t previously thought about. The focus was based on ‘What if you can’t interview anyone’ and the ‘importance of analysis’.

One of the key things I learnt was to think about what you would do if you couldn’t interview anyone. What I thought this meant was using other forms of data collection techniques for example surveys etc but what it actually meant was what happens if you can’t speak to anyone to gather anymore information. This was when the penny dropped, and I realised this session was more about finding the background to your topic. Adesola described it as layers – finding out the background and culture of the topic is the first layer and then finding out other’s opinions is the second. Finding out the opinions of others would be useless without the first layer anyway! For example, you could be looking to do your inquiry based around disabilities in dance and wanting to push for initiatives to allow more people with disabilities to be able to dance. However, if you do the background investigation you would find this has already been implemented in a lot of places. That is just an example but clearly shows why finding out the culture of the topic is so important.

In order to do this, we can look at articles or blogs posted around the subject. Forums are cheating slightly as that is still finding out people’s opinions but have a look for movements or things that have been done or acted upon within your topic. Uncover the history of the topic. This will give us a better understanding of what more we want to find out from others.

Once we have done this and gathered our data we must remember that data is no use without analysis. For our analysis we are looking for themes that emerge within our data. For example, Adesola used my inquiry topic as an example and it really helped me understand. Whilst finding out about how auditions and constant rejection can affect mental health, for example, I could see a common thought from my participants that living outside of London puts a mental stress on them when it comes to an audition. They may be worried about taking the day off work, the trains may be delayed, or it may be a struggle to pay for the expensive travel. If this was something that kept reoccurring within my data I would say that there was a theme emerging about travel influencing mental health when it comes to auditions. Don’t forget, don’t take what we find in interviews as truth, we are not looking for an answer.

I hope this has helped anyone that reads this blog, it has also really helped me to crystallise it in my head. 

MORE Form Skype Session 05/11/18

Yesterday I joined in with the Skype session hosted by Adesola and Helen focusing on the MORE form. It was so useful for me as I found the form quite overwhelming and confusing at first, however now I seem to understand it a lot more. I hope this blog will help others that couldn't attend the session as much as the session helped me.

A few tips -

• Put (BAPP) in brackets at the end of the name of the project 
• Add your supervisors name so it can be sent to them for a signature
• If nothing else, read sections 1, 4 and 6 of the MORE form page on Unihub
• When you get sent back your form from your supervisor, if it says rejected it doesn't mean you've failed, it just means that you have notes to look over

I personally asked about how appropriate it was to reveal peoples ages an gender in my final inquiry project and Adesola raised a few points that got me thinking...

1. Why is it necessary to reveal this? Will it really add weight to my project at the end of the inquiry?
2. If you have to do more forms for the release of personal information you need to think about the impact of the participant having signed lots of forms before the research has even started. How may they feel about all the forms? Will this affect them and their answers?
3. Gender is a large topic to unpick as I would need to think about how they identify themselves as this may be different to how I perceive their gender. Am I allowing for people that don't class themselves as male or female. Adesola suggested she knows of lots of people that cannot be a part of research because they can't fit into a tick box. This was something I hadn't even thought about so made me really consider whether it was worth revealing the gender, and whether it has relevance to my inquiry topic in general. 
4. Age and gender if spoken about in the inquiry would first need to be explained and this is a big topic to unpick especially considering we only have 12 weeks to do it. You could not include the gender of someone without giving it some background and context firstly, and this may be too much to do within the time frame we have

All these points have made me consider whether I do want to reveal the age and gender, and how much this information will really add weight to my final project, or whether it will open up too many doors and create a project that is too large for me to deal with within the time scale.

I hope this helps some people and please feel free to comment your thoughts!