At your preliminary meeting with your participants, talk through the purpose of the study, information about being a subject, and procedures sections, and all that follows, making sure to answer any questions your participants might have. After you have made your presentation on your project = get 2 signed copies. One for your participant, one for you (that you will then turn in to me).
If you are doing interviews, you will use this preliminary meeting to provide a copy of the interview protocol, to arrange a time for the interview, to make sure your participant knows the interview will be recorded, and to answer any other questions your participant might have. Be sure to make clear that participating in the study is voluntary.
Developing the interview protocol: We spent a good chunk of class talking about how interviews are organized. Interviews are conversations - and they work like conversations. Like conversations, it takes people a while to "warm up" to a subject and generally they will have lots to say if you provide lots of chances to follow up on the ideas and language they have associated with the topic of conversation. Your primary role as an interviewer is to keep the participant focused on the topic of conversation. If they go "off-topic", listen carefully to make sure it isn't really "on topic" but just somethng you weren't thinking of - and if you need to re-direct the talk - do it generously (Wow, that was interesting) and tactfully bring the focus back (could you tell me some more about what you said earlier about. . .).
Your interview should be no longer than 30 minutes. You will need a good, rich body of talk to have enough material for your project, but transcribing is time consuming so you don't want to bury yourself.
To make sure you have the kinds of questions that will "work" for
you:
- Design them carefully using the "pointers" we discussed in class
- Test/time/voice record your interview questions with a "practice" participant
- Listen to your recording for your "test" and think about what worked and what you can do better
- Remember that each interview will depend on your participant - and be prepared to be flexible,
1.Lead (short - less than a minute). Begin with your "lead" = write a statement of the project's focus as part of your interview protocol (like on the sample). When you actually DO the interview, be sure to state your name, get your participant to state his/her name, state the focus of your project, where you are, and the date.
2. Set up questions. (2-5 minutes) These should be short, factual, easy to answer questions. (Think back to the examples we gave in class). They might be information about the participant's background, identity, training or memberships assoicated with your focus.
3. Orienting question (5-7 minutes). Often, the first story will give you a preview/foreshadowing of where the interview will go. This question gives your participant a chance to let you know how they see your focus. Pay attention to this answer and as you talk, pick up on your participant's language and ways of seeing things and work those words/views into the questions the form the body of your interview.
4. The main section of the interview (about 15-20 minutes)
We noticed in the Literacy narrative interview protocol that the questions were organized chronologically and by setting = and that some of the same questions were asked about experiences from different times and places. Give some thought about how you organize your questions. Choose about 2-4 big categories or subjects/focuses for your questions. Spend about 5 minutes on each set and cycle through and back through a related point of view. Think of the examples from class.
5. Closing (2-3 minutes). Your last question should again invite your participant to open up your focus in any way they want - check to see if there is anything that you might have forgotten to ask that they feel is important.
I'm afraid I didn't leave you much time to work on your interview protocols in class - but if you post them on your blog I will give you lots of feedback - and we can talk about them in class.
For Tuesday:
Blog 16:
If you are doing an interview as part of your research project => post your draft interview protocol.
If you are not doing an interview, look back through your research plan, and write up any data collection tools: you might need. These might include surveys, plans for making your observations (what, where, who, how long etc you will observe), timelines for completing your data collection, ideas about how you might focus and analyze your data = the more writing you get up on your blog the more I can help you with your project.
I will return your short analysis essays and give you some general feedback on what we need to work on in terms of analysis.
Research paper grading criteria. We will review/write up the specific criteria for the research paper and negotiate how we will assign the grade. To do this we will take into account what we learned about the form for research papers (reading the model essays) =what information needs to be included in what order, what we learned about doing analysis (the rubric + what we learned from doing the short analysis papers), how much credit you want for your research process (collecting + analyzing your data) versus how much you credit you want for the paper itself, and anything else you think should be counted for your grade. We will also set up a timeline for completing the project + doing your presentations.
We are definitely getting to the fun part of this course! Have a great weekend and see you on Tuesday.
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