So, I haven't written any posts recently as my surveys were live and I didn't want to confuse people who were accessing my blog to complete them. Many thanks to all of you that did take time to complete them the results are very interesting.
I have also been very busy recently juggling my dissertation with my PGCE application, student finance forms, ISTD applications and two jobs. This whole semester is really teaching me how to manage my time and I personally think I could do it better. I have had to prioritise whats more important and unfortunately everything had a deadline before my dissertation.
Now everything else is pretty much out of the way I have more time to focus on my dissertation. I have sent chapters 1 & 2 and my analysis from my surveys to Peter for feedback, as I am doing two part research I have had to analyse my surveys so I can come up with further research questions for my focus group that takes place on Sunday 17th. Im looking forward to my focus group as I really want to know in depth answers to what I found from my surveys. I have secured the venue, bought refreshments, advertised the session and drafted contracts for ethical purposes. So, until my focus group I have to draft the questions that I want to ask and check my audio recorder as I will be audio recorded for future reference to my dissertation all of which is explained in the contracts. I also need to write up chapter 3 as soon as my focus group is complete as this also needs to be sent in by the 19th October which is the deadline for these chapters. I hope to get this written by the 18th so I can ask questions about all of my chapters at the campus session with Peter on Tuesday 19th October.
I am unsure how I feel about my progress so far, at first I didn't know where to start, I found it very overwhelming as I knew what I wanted to write, and what I needed to include. This is something that i'm passionate about so you would think it is easy to sit down and get on with, however I found it difficult to start as I felt like everything sounded like I was repeating myself and this put me off writing anything, then I felt bad when I didn't do anything at all. Finally I found my way and words became to flow because of Peters feedback on the literature review. This got me going as I had already got a decent amount of literature reports from last semesters project proposal.
In one way I feel like I am ahead as I am writing my analysis from my surveys, however in another way I am behind because I can't write chapter 3 because I haven't done my focus group yet. Doing two part research I feel is very beneficial to my learning and my research, however I don't know if this could also hinder my deadlines or my word count until I have got further into my dissertation. Only time will tell and I don't like that I don't know the answer to that yet.
I feel for now I have done all that I can, I could start to edit and add to my previous chapters but think it would be more beneficial to receive the feedback first. So until Sunday I am going to plot my questions and cross my fingers that Sunday goes well.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Abbi Really beneficial to hear about your progress. I hope your explanation is helpful to others. How are things going now?
ReplyDeleteHi Abbi,
ReplyDeletecurious to know how your focus group went? Laura Davitt and myself held 2 meetings that both went really well. What did you find made your meeting successful? There are some good books at Trent park campus if you can manage to get there regarding focus meetings and why they are a good method to use.
i found myself feeling the same as you, its so hard to get everything down and know where to start but once you get going it kind of becomes hard to stop, don't you think? Its great you got your feedback and surveys back early in the game though, means you can analyze those thoroughly and spend a good amount of time on them.
Stephanie
I found my focus group really interesting and to be honest it was fun. I had a diverse group of women who attended all of which were aged 18-35 and I was lucky that I got ten women, this is the minimum amount of women that I wanted there as I had schedhuled it on a Sunday morning.
ReplyDeleteDuring my focus group I did find myself getting slightly defensive at times as it was on a subject that I have a passion for, however it was very beneficial to my learning and without conducting a focus froup I don’t feel that I would have really understood women’s perceptions. The focus group gave me the chance to really dig deep into womens feelings on pole dancing and ask “why” a lot.
I think that my focus group was successful because I used a dance studio which had a pole aligned in the room. This was only for visual effect, however I think that this was really useful as some of the women had never seen one in the flesh, and was supried how it stayed up and the amount of weight it could take. I also had a script so that I could ask all of the questions I wanted to and a notetaker. Knowing that the notetaker would not be able to keep up with the flow of conversation I audio recorded it and used my recording to finalise results before deleting it.
Unfortunatly I cannot get to Trent Park to access the books, however I have done lots of research on focus groups and used a lot of the information when I conducted my focus group.
I have found the process of this project difficult at times, however I have found it an advantage to get my research done early, this then did mean I could spend time analysing my work thouroughly.
Many thanks for the information about the books, How did you find your focus group?
Abbi