Not only can research findings can be gr…
Not only can research findings can be greatly influenced by the chosen methodologies, I think the way in which research participants are sampled will also have major impacts on the findings. For example, while snowball or convenient sampling would be easy to achieve, it may not be an appropriate for producing representative research findings. As researchers, we need to have a clear understanding of how our chosen sample(s) can influence our understanding of the topic at hand. In some cases, the representativeness of research findings may not be as important as developing new theories or reaffirming existing theories. For my group, we have yet to decide on how we will divvy up the participants for our focus groups. As we will be working with youth, there is a range of possibilities that we can take to establish our focus groups, such as organizing them by race/ethnicity, age or gender. How do other groups plan to select participants for their research sample? Let me know, – I’d love to hear your thoughts!
Cheng Yee Seah 11:42 pm on March 10, 2016 Permalink |
This isn’t really a response but I second Angela’s questions! This is definitely our next biggest challenge as grouping students in certain ways may not only impact the discussions and results we get, but may also impact their perceptions and ideas they take away from the activity. Since we are working with youth, there’s definitely a lot of vulnerability and bravery that is required from the students to open up and discuss issues that may be highly sensitive, so taking this into consideration will be crucial as well. But as Angela said, I think our group would love to hear your thoughts/suggestions on this – are there any other groups who are thinking of doing focus group discussions?
gabriel olivella 6:00 pm on March 11, 2016 Permalink |
Hey Angela! My group is working with the Caribou Friendship Society and we are also applying a mixed approach of interview methods to gather our data. I agree with you when you say that it is crucial to be careful in using methods to extract the best representative research findings.
Our group is considering on working with Focus groups, life history, and potentially some surveys. For our focus group section, we are choosing our target demographic based on age as well as ethnicity. Since our topic addresses intergenerational trauma from Residential Schools, we considered that old folks who went through this process might be suitable for the focus group. These individuals must have gone through Residential School, and hence by default they need to be Indigenous. Both factors, age and ethnicity, are in our opinion great definers of how our experience in society is shaped. Our group concluded that based on these two characteristics we could set aside a group for the questionnaire.
We are also considering on sharing some of our personal stories with them. Story sharing blends into the participant observation method as well, because aside from interviewing we will be telling experiences too. We thought this approach (blending focus group and participant observation) could ease the formalities of interviews just enough to make our interviewees more comfortable. Do you have any thought on this?
Either way we will be also having a social worker from the Caribou Friendship Society help modulate the focus group to get that middle person who can further stimulate more openness when talking.
I hope my commentary helps Angela, and good luck in your group’s research!
bridgitte taylor 11:09 pm on March 14, 2016 Permalink |
I definitely agree with many of the sentiments expressed through this thread, especially regarding the assumptions that surveys can make (the one we took in particular, regarding gender and identity, as many have pointed out), but also in terms of how a research or survey question is perceived. For me, when checking off the boxes on the survey, I chose those traits which were most important to me personally, versus what answers I actually thought most people would cite, or which may be typically designated as strong leadership characteristics. In this sense, I think survey’s can be tricky in that while they may seem simple, a thousand questions might go through a participants mind – and there’s a good chance they may answer questions within frameworks that the survey conductors had never considered. As a part of the Social Planning Council group, we had initially thought we would set up surveys prior to heading up to Williams Lake. Survey’s seemed like a fairly simple way to gather information prior to departure so that would could really start incorporating our research findings into our final report. Hence, I feel as though there may be tendencies to distribute survey’s just for the sake of it, even if the answers are potentially not reliable (if the survey questions/answers aren’t carefully thought out). This can be tricky territory no doubt. These challenges were compounded by the fact that we were consistently told that there were barriers to survey completion, a.) because of communication barriers and b.) because there’s few incentives for young people (who we will ideally be working with) to actually complete surveys when they aren’t entirely sure of the value of their answers, or if there’s few incentives.