BAPP Task 6b: Review of the Inquiry Tools

The task 6B of the Module 2 of the BA (Hons) in Professional Practice at the Middlesex University consists of blogging your critical reflections on the relative merits of the 4 tools in addressing your inquiries or what you want to find out. You should evaluate both their merits and their limits. Your experience and independent understanding of the general principles of insider-researcher relate to proposal

To develop a professional inquiry there are 4 different tools that you can use to develop it: Interviews, Focus Group, Survey and Documents. In my case, as I said in the previous post I will be using mainly the tool of interviews, because it suits better my way of research as well as how to acquire the knowledge that I need to analyse for my inquiry.

However, I will analyse all the merits and limits of the different 4 tools in order to deepen my knowledge on them, to see how can I use them for my inquiry:

- Interviews:

              Merits:

- The information you get is accurate because you are the one in charge of the questions,

- You can collect very detailed knowledge through the answers of the interviewee

- You can get both verbal and non-verbal communication (Body Language)

              Limits:

              - It is a long process, therefore time consuming

- You could analyse wrongly the answers of your interviewee, therefore you wouldn´t get an accurate piece of knowledge

- It could be difficult to organise with your interviewee or they could feel afraid to arrange it if you are not doing it politely enough.

- Focus Group:

              Merits:

              - It allows to make more questions

              - Also it allows you for a qualitative approach to your inquiry research

              - It is an open environment; people can participate with each other.

              Limits:

              - It is a very time consuming process

- Your participants might feel exposed to each other and therefore not answer accurately or honestly to the questions

- It is a very difficult process to organise

             

- Survey:

              Merits:

              - You can collect the data from a wide range of people

              - The interviewee as anonymous could be more honest that

              - It takes less time to organise it, therefore is less time consuming

              Limits:

              - It can be hard to develop the right questions to obtain the knowledge you want

- Your participants can get bored of it and don´t continue the survey if it is not interesting enough.

- If you participants don´t understand the questions they have no access to you to solve it before they respond.

- Documents:

              Merits:

              - It is very useful to expand your current knowledge

- It is an existing knowledge, therefore with hard evidence of what already exist supported by studies of professionals in this field.

- You can find documents to back up your ideas and support your analysis of them

              Limits:

              - You could interpret incorrectly the documents

              - As knowledge keeps growing every day, it could be an out of date source

              - This documents could have errors, as we are all humans.

How do these inquiry methods relate to the workplace and particular sector knowledge?

In my case, these methods relate to my workplace quite closely because I will be developing 2 of my interviews, the ones in Riga at the Latvian National Opera with professionals of that institution. Concretely to one choreographer and one video designer that I am working at the moment to develop a new solo to be premiered next month.

How does your inquiry help others to develop their knowledge and understanding?

This inquiry will help both professional and students of the field of dance to have a better understand of how technology is influencing dance nowadays, and how it will be a key point to the development of this art form in the 21^st century. And hopefully, after the presentation of my inquiry I will add a bit more of knowledge to this field.

Don´t forget to keep following this blog and my Google + Community for the updates about my research!

Gonzalo