Here are the tools I used within my inquiry
Interviews
I decide to use qualitative research over quantitive because I really wanted to get thoughts and feelings. I wanted to know how people coped with the transition process because it can be a very distressing for some dancers. I felt that I was just not going to get those thoughts and feelings through questionnaires. Doing interviews allows you to explore deeper into what the person is meaning. Questionnaires provide good factual statistical data and are good for anonymity but I did not feel I would get the data I was looking for that way.
“this is not a question of which is better, quantitative or qualitative; rather, the question is, Which is a better fit for the research questions to be studied?” (Grady. M 1998 p.9)
I selected my dancers very carefully, I wanted to have a well rounded group to get true to life results. For example I did not want 6 dancers who have all transitioned into teaching, I wanted a mixture. I had dancers who are now teaching through to one who now runs her own business in the catering industry. I did not want 6 dancers who had all got injured because I feel that could bias my results. I selected 3 girls and 3 boys who have all been colleagues of mine at some point in my career. I decided to keep it to 6 because it is my first ever inquiry and I did not want to bite off more than I could chew.
I enjoyed putting the questions together however, I do feel that they could have been better. I put them together quite early on and did one interview early on which then meant I could not change them because everything needs to remain as consistent as possible. I did find it interesting how each person could interpret the question a little differently and end up talking about something else but I was very mindful of trying to explain what I meant at times because I was worried I was ‘leading a question’ which I did not want to do for obvious reasons, so that was a tricky one. If I wrote my questions now they would be quite different. I wrote so many questions covering so many things because I was worried I would miss something. I would try and keep my questions to a minimum but try and explore deeper into them for example a few questions I received a simple yes/no answer and I left it at that because I had so many questions to get through and I did not want to take up too much of their time, I tried to keep my interviews to 30-40 minutes. If I only had 10 questions I could try and encourage them to go into more detail if they were willing to by asking how and why? Having said that though I did manage to extract some really good data from the questions I did ask.
Transcribing was a torturous affair. I really did not anticipate how long that was going to take. It took hours and hours to do just one. I did not find it easy because how we speak does not necessarily transfer to paper very well, people start to say something then half way stop and say something completely different so on paper it makes absolutely no sense but it has to be verbatim regardless.
Once the transcribing was over the coding started which was a long winded process and very confusing trying to sift through reams of information that all seemed extremely relevant but unrealistic to use it all. It was really satisfying once things start to click into place and I could start to make connections to theories or the same themes kept reoccurring. I don't think I have got this down to a fine art though, I need more practice. I found this youtube video by (Löfgren, K. 2013, online) very helpful,
https://youtu.be/DRL4PF2u9XA.
Focus Group
The focus group I coordinated was a mixture of colleagues, friends and fellow students. We only got together 3 or four times mainly on Skype but the sessions we had were invaluable. Everybody got really into it and got quite passionate about their thoughts and feelings, each challenging the others ideas and challenging theories and themes in which I instigated. It really was thought provoking and unveiled new ideas to which I had not thought of before which got me thinking to an even deeper level. Although the focus group was for my benefit everyone seemed to really enjoy it. I am aware that focus groups can encourage some people to shy away and not say too much, but that really didn’t happen with mine, everyone contributed and everyone seemed very comfortable in doing so.
I conducted one of focus group at my house when one of my other friends happened to be over from Portugal for the weekend, she is a nurse. She sat in on the focus group but remained quite quiet. We were talking about passion and how we all have passion for performing and we were unsure we would ever find that level of passion anywhere else. For example I asked my husband ( who is an engineer) are you passionate about engineering? do you think ‘oh I cannot wait to take that engine to bits? do you get a buzz from putting it all back together?’ his reply was he gets satisfaction from it and he does very much enjoy it but he is not passionate about it like we are with dancing. I think the only thing that would give hime the same passion and buzz would be being a formula one driver. So I asked my nurse friend, are you passionate about nursing? is that all you have ever wanted to do? her reply was very similar to my husbands. She loves nursing and helping people and she is very good at it too, but she could not say she was passionate about it like we are dancing. I asked her what she would have loved to have done, she said dance and sing. Unfortunately she wasn’t given the same opportunities to do that when she was younger. I found incorporating ‘outsiders’ opinions and experiences very interesting. It made me realise we are very very lucky to have been given the opportunity to live our dream because many are not granted that chance.
Observation
At first I thought I cannot really do an observation, how can I observe someone’s transition, transitions can take years, but then I realised I have actually already observed quite a few. A lot of my friends are no longer dancing anymore for different reasons and I have remained in regular touch with them, so I have actually witnessed quite a few transitions, some positive, some negative and some almost neutral. So I could call upon those experiences in order to help understand theories and related them to real life. So it wasn’t an observational exercise I conducted as such but still very much an observation which really helped with my understanding and relating to the theories.
References
Grady. M (1998), Qualitative and Action Research: A Practitioner Handbook, Phi Delta Kappa International, - Action research in education, Indiana USA.
