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.
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