Tools of Professional Inquiry - Task 6A

Survey:
As with the SIG I decided not to carry out my survey online but instead to go to a dance school with hard copies and ask students to fill them out. I really am more of a hands on kind of person when it comes to learning and I find it much easier to process research if I actually have it in my hands. This is not to say that in the future I wont be tempted with sites such as surveymonkey.com but for now I didn't feel it would be beneficial. I ensured my participants were over the age of 16 and happy to fill out the surveys before I handed them out. As I handed them out in a dance school I knew that I would get answers relevant to what i was researching and this was a great help.

Focus Group:
I decided to hold my focus group at my house and invited 4 of my old college friends around to participate. I chose Purposive candidates and not representative ones as I felt it would be more beneficial to my inquiry. Each member is now working in different areas of the industry and found their views to be extremely valuable. As we have known each other for several years I found they were all very willing to open up about their financial situations and whether or not they would be where they are today without the financial backing they received. Every time I steered the conversation in a certain direction they were very quick to follow, although it was a relaxed environment everybody knew there was a purpose behind our meeting and they were more than willing to contribute. Again I recorded the meeting for reference, as I knew the participants so well I didn't make them identify themselves each time they spoke. At the beginning of the meeting I asked everyones names and occupations and from then on I was simply able to identify them by the sound of their voice. I didn't think it was necessary to have a gate keeper as i wasn't having a discussion with a specific group of people or minors. The group didn't represent anything as a whole it was simply 4 individuals putting across their views on a particular topic and although they didn't i knew they would have said had they thought any of the questions to be inappropriate or unnecessary.

Observation:
I found that this method alone was of no use to me. In order to establish the help they had received to get where they are today I had to give each person I observed a questionnaire to fill out. I carried out my observation at my old dance school back in my home town, it was a group of 16 and 17 year old dancers all considering whether to attend University or Performing Arts College. Whilst watching them dance I made brief notes on their capabilities but in all honesty wanted to get them in a focus group and talk about their experiences thus far. Once I could see that they could all dance to a high standard I had no further reason to observe them and because of this I carried out minimal observation. Instead I convinced them to be part of a small focus group which I held in the corridor of the dance school with their teacher as the gatekeeper. This 5 minutes I spent talking to them was far more valuable to my research than the hour I spent watching them dance.