I have never studied research methods and I find it very hard when my students ask me direct questions related to research. I should be the one they can turn for advice, but I just point them in the direction of other lecturers who have studied it and are now teaching it. But for this project I need to talk to students, I need to research the right methods to gather data and interpret it. I better get reading and finding out what context is the most suitable for my topic.

Universal Methods of Design, 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions was so helpful to familiarize myself with all the different methods but also to help me focus. I had numerous conversation with my course leader and my programme director and some students about my research project, which ultimately emphasised the importance of understanding users/students throughout the design process to create effective solutions. Also, being flexible and able to adapt my research approach is crucial in the success of this project (Hanington & Martin, 2012).

Focus group were eliminated at the start. Who would want to share some delicate information about the way their learning difficulties have impacted their studies. But focus groups would enable me to speak to a larger groups of students at the same time, get their isight rather than doing them one by one. ‘Focus groups are used to gather opinions.’ (Krueger & Casey, 2014). This is what I need but I don’t think I will get the best insight in the group environment.

Another option is interviews. When doing my own 1:1 tutorials I found that students were more willing to share information and opinions, much more than in group tutorials. I’m going to be asking delicate questions and sometimes they might feel like they are talking against the university and they will shy away from the information I’m trying to get out of them. It seems right to be conducting interviews for my research topic, but to gather deep insight and data into this topic, I would have to conduct multiple interviews, plan them, schedule them, do them, transcribe them and then analyse them. I better roll my sleeves up, this is going to take a while. So how many should I do? Researching into ‘how many’ is ‘it depends’ (Baker et al. 2012) on the focus and objectives of the analysis and the time available to conduct the research. I don’t have long! Adler and Adler in the same paper (p.10) comment on students conducting research and their small window for gathering data and ‘suggest that they should aim for a sample of 12’. In my short space of time, this cannot happen but also I do not know, well enough, 12 students with an ISA. It’s been decided, I’m going for a sample of 3.

Another dilemma I’m contemplating, are the interviews enough to gather data and insight, or do I need to do questionnaires alongside? Interviews are often one component of a research strategy and complimentary methods of questionnaire or observations, are used to verify and humanize data collected.’ (Hanington & Martin 2012). This would be great to have, but this will have to be one of the limitation of my research. Let’s get cracking!

References

• Baker, S.E. and Edwards, R. (2012). How many qualitative interviews is enough? National Centre for Research Methods Review Paper. [online] Available at: https://eprints.ncrm.ac.uk/id/eprint/2273/4/how_many_interviews.pdf.
• Hanington, B, & Martin, B (2012), Universal Methods of Design : 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions, Quarto Publishing Group USA, Osceola.