Week

Description of Tasks

Give a detailed description of what you did this week regarding research and community engagement.

This week, I reviewed the feedback I obtained from the participants in the interview I conducted. The piloting process appeared to be successful insofar as I was able to obtain relevant answers to the questions I asked. Those questions allowed me to obtain data that could help me to answer the research question. But the data also let me see that there were other questions I could ask as well. I view this as a success because through this process I was able to see where I could probe a little more deeply to obtain a better and fuller understanding of the issues pertaining to why some parents choose to send their children to private schools instead of public schools.

One modification I may make to facilitate better interviewing technique will be to switch from a structured interview process to a semi-structured interview process. That way I can ask questions that might occur to me during the interview and I can probe for deeper data based upon the information supplied at the time. Burgess (1982) points out that the unstructured interview as a conversation can be beneficial for deeper analysis (p. 107).

After reviewing ways to support interviewing, I also decided I should ask participants for their permission to conduct follow-up inquiries through email. This will be helpful for when it is time to analyze the data. I can confirm with the participants that the way I am reading their responses is appropriate to what they intended to communicate. This method is known as member checking, or respondent validation (Barbour, 2001).

Another option is the survey instrument, but I have decided against this because what I want is to investigate this issue deeply and that means having the option to explore what is going on in the lives and minds of parents, what their perceptions are, and what factors contribute to their decision-making. The semi-structured interview process will give me the opportunity to do the kind of investigative work that needs to be done. A survey instrument is best suited for confirming or rejecting a hypothesis. But since I have not formed a hypothesis, it does not suit my needs. My research and the analysis I do will lead me to have a better understanding of the situation.

Next Steps

Give a brief description of what you plan to do next.

What I plan to do next is pilot a semi-structured interview with three additional participants from my community. The original participants were helpful in that they gave me references that I could contact to gain more insight into this issue. I have already contacted three new participants based on the references and they have agreed to do a semi-structured interview with me over phone. I am setting aside time for each one, and estimate that 30 minutes will be sufficient to test the piloting of this new approach. I will provide information to the participants so that they can give their informed consent, as is appropriate.

Capstone Questions

What questions do you want to bring to the learning community or professor

When conducting a semi-structured interview, is it better to record the interview or to take notes during the process and refer to the notes later?

My Reference Notes

Barbour, R.S. (2001). Checklists for improving rigour in qualitative research: a case of the tail wagging the dog. BMJ 322, 1115-1117.

This source was helpful for giving me information on ways to improve qualitative research, using the interview process. It suggested member checking as a way to make sure my analysis of data given by participants is actually aligned with what the participants meant to say. It requires obtaining feedback from participants to validate my analysis. It is a good way to bolster qualitative research and make it more credible and as objective as possible.

Burgess, R. G. (1982). The unstructured interview as a conversation.Field research: A

sourcebook and field manual, 107-10.

This source was helpful in that it provided me with support for revamping my interview approach. I went into the first pilot with a structured interview, but I felt like while the answers I obtained were good the interviews could have gone a little deeper. With the semi-structured approach, there is more room to ask questions on the fly. There is also the unstructured interview approach, which can yield very good results by allowing the interview to proceed more like a conversation. This can let organic ideas rise to the top. I may have to consider the unstructured process and might try to pilot an interview using the unstructured approach to see if it is more helpful than the semi-structured. At this point, I feel like my interviews need some sort of guidance, which is why I want to have a few questions ready to go, but that may change if I do an unstructured interview and find it to be most helpful in terms of what I am trying to accomplish here.

There are some more materials I want to read over the following week in terms of understanding how to properly analyze interview data. I think that what I need to do, whether it is taking notes or recording and printing out a transcript, is to focus on ideas or themes that come up and use these to support my understanding of the picture that emerges from the data.

Week 10

Description of Tasks

Give a detailed description of what you did this week regarding research and community engagement.

This week, I modified the interview I conducted by inserting new questions I wanted to ask and also I allowed myself the opportunity to probe a little more deeply with the three new participants I interviewed this week. I found this method to be even better than the first, because with the structured interview I felt...…study of this nature, including how to conduct analysis and how towrite up the research report. This is a big endeavor and I want to make sure I have a good understanding of what I am doing before I begin. So this week, I intend to go back over the material I have on how to do this properly.

After that, I want to talk to some more parents and see how many interviews I can do. I will also try to interview some public school board members or teachers and maybe some parents of public school children to see where they stand on this issue. I still feel like there are more sides to this issue that need to be explored, but I know I do not have time to explore them all. That will probably be a limitation of my study. Now that I am beginning, I can see where there will be issues that I cannot address. I wonder if there is a way to address them anyway before I begin.

Additionally, I want to get some feedback from my mentors so that I am confident going forward. So far, when I reflect on what I have done, I feel good about the progress I have made. I am reaching goals and this work is contributing to my learning on the subject. I think when I am finished I will be able to contribute to the existing literature on the subject and help others who have questions about why parents choose private over public school.

Capstone Questions

What questions do you want to bring to the learning community or professor

How can I address obvious limitations to my study in a way that can help me to do more with the study and address issues that might prevent it from succeeding?

My Reference Notes

Anney, V. N. (2014). Ensuring the quality of the findings of qualitative research:

Looking at trustworthiness criteria.Journal of Emerging Trends in Educational Research and Policy Studies (JETERAPS) 5(2), 272-281.

This study was helpful for showing how to make sure data is trustworthy. I want my data to be solid enough that it will be useful for analysis, but I also need a proper method of analysis to help here. I need to decide how I am going to analyze the data going forward.

Choy, L. T. (2014). The strengths and weaknesses of research methodology: Comparison

and complimentary between qualitative and quantitative approaches.IOSR Journal of Humanities and Social Science,19(4), 99-104.

This study was helpful because it helped clarify some points on qualitative and quantitative research and when one might be more useful than the other. For me, since I am doing exploratory research, qualitative makes the most sense. However, there are some weaknesses to this method that I need to address, based on this reading, such as how to make my findings valid and generalizeable. I need to re-read this to fully understand what is meant by that.