The End is Nigh…. Or is it?

Posted on 21 August, 2013 by a8906382

Wow, after nearly a year of fieldwork, the interviews are coming to a close! July ended quietly on the recruitment front, so I knew I would need to push the recruitment stuff forward in August to attempt to secure 5 or so more women for the final batch of interviews. I started with a simple status on my research Facebook page (just while I went away to think of some other methods) and the response was unprecedented! 3 or 4 young women contacted me within an hour, and I had a total of 7 new contacts within 2 days. This may not sound like a lot, but sometimes I wouldn’t even get 7 contacts in a month, let alone a couple of days! So yes, recruitment obviously can be like buses, nothing for ages, then loads come along at once! So far, 4 of these contacts have been interviewed, and the 25th interview is now booked in for this week. As 25 is the approx. number of interviews I initially stated I would undertake, this could mean that by next week the interview stage of the research is completed (leaving me to try to sort out the pesky focus groups – no comment)! I will need to speak to my supervisors in today’s supervision about whether I should keep trying to recruit for further interviews or not. It’s a tricky one, how do you know when to stop? When and how can you say you have ‘enough’ or ‘sufficient’ data? I feel like I’m still getting loads of rich, new data, and I could keep going… but you have to draw the line somewhere I guess. So this could be the end of an era. Or not. Watch this space!

How long is a piece of string?

Posted on 31 July, 2013 by a8906382

I’ve been thinking about interview lengths this week (yes my life really is that exciting)…. It’s always a difficult one when you arrange an interview with someone – how long do you book the room for? Can you make plans afterwards? How long do you tell the participant it is going to take? You don’t want to scare them off by suggesting a 2 hour interview is on the cards, but neither do you want them to have to regretfully call it quits after half an hour because they need to dash off to work or whatever. Plus, the reality is, you really just don’t know how long each interview is going to last, particularly with projects such as mine – the interviews are in-depth, semi-structured and quite participant-led. I use a lot of prompts and follow-ups to probe what the young women are saying, so it really can be difficult to predict how long the whole process will take. A lot of it depends on what – and how much – my participants want to say to me. I aimed originally for ‘about an hour’ in terms of length, and this is what I tend to say to participants in advance too. So I decided to see just how accurate that had turned out to be… And guess what?! I was right on the money, so it would seem! After 20 interviews, my average interview length is exactly 59 minutes. There is a fair bit of variation within that of course, with the shortest being 35 minutes, and the longest 1 hour 45 minutes. So perhaps we can make a rough estimate, embracing the fact that some interviews will be much longer than this, and others much shorter. Although having said this, the motto of fieldwork should probably always be ‘expect the unexpected!’…

To pay or not to pay?

Posted on 12 July, 2013 by a8906382

I was having a chat with a fellow PhD student the other day, and the issue of whether or not you reward participants in some way for their time came up. It reminded me of when I was debating this old classic myself. At first, I was dead set on offering participants some kind of financial incentive/reward for their involvement in the research process, but after working through it, I eventually decided against it.

I considered three main options:

a) Do not mention prior to the interview / focus group, but afterwards reward participants for their time with a small token of appreciation e.g. gift voucher

b) Mention up-front that participants will receive token of appreciation

c) Provide teas, coffees, nibbles etc but do not financially reward participants for their time

Option a has the advantage that it may have helped avoid the risk of participants feeling in any way coerced to take part in the study for the financial gain, which could disproportionately affect those who might appreciate the money the most (e.g. lower income, working part time). It may also have helped avoid participants feeling pressure to give certain ‘right’ answers to the researcher. However, a disadvantage is that the fact of the payment would not be able to be used to aid the recruitment process. Additionally, it may have been difficult to keep the fact of the payment hidden, particularly amongst groups of friends. Some women may have persuaded their friends to take part on the grounds that there was a gift voucher to be had. Option b is more transparent and would have avoided this issue and possibly aided considerably in recruitment. However, there is still a risk that participants may feel ‘coerced’, and possibly the greatest risk is that people may have taken part for the wrong reasons (e.g. the gift voucher) rather than because they have a lot to say or are interested in contributing to the project. This could result in the research process producing less rich data. Considering these pros and cons, I decided not to offer payment or incentive, but to provide refreshments and cover travel costs where relevant. I predicted that the research topic would hopefully be interesting and relevant to young women (well, of course, I would say that!), who would come forward without the offer of additional incentives. Similarly, I was not specifically targeting a particularly hard-to-reach or very narrow group, so had a large pool of potential participants as there were very few limits on who can take part within the gender and age range. I also thought that in this way the decision could always be revisited at a later date if recruitment proved problematic. And as it turned out, I think it was probabaly the right choice. Women have come forward because – so they tell me – they are interested in the topic and want to help out with the research. Having said that, I know every project is different, and for some research – for example with hard-to-reach groups – it may be appropriate to offer some sort of incentive or payment.

Career Development

Posted on 28 June, 2013 by a8906382

Recruitment progressing slowly but steadily, it certainly seems that snowballing and word of mouth are more effective currently than some of the other more formal mechanisms. Got two more interviews lined up, and 3 more potentially, so I’m not actually too far off reaching my total of 25 now!

In other news, I thought I’d blog a little about how I have been trying to use social media / the web etc. to raise my academic profile and start engaging in some of that scary, career-development stuff. Time is going to fly and I will be in third year before I know it, and I cannot stress the importance of starting to at least think about next steps and longer term career goals nice and early.

Twitter has been a surprisingly useful tool. I mainly use it to tweet stuff related to my research areas of interest such as gender, femininity and alcohol, and I have started to build up a network of ‘followers’, as well as following some of my favourite academics which has been useful.

Academia.edu is a top website too, I have my own profile: http://newcastle.academia.edu/EmilyNicholls and have been able to share some of my work. My work and profile have been viewed over 100 times, which I think can only be a good thing, and the useful Analytics tool allows you to track who is searching for your work on google etc. I’ve got a CV uploaded on there too.

LinkedIn is another site I’ve engaged with, however I think this is less useful than Academia.edu as it is tailored more to the generic world of work rather than the mystical world of academia specifically. Might be worth a shot though!

Yorkshire Sculpture Park

Posted on 6 June, 2013 by a8906382

It’s so important to make the most of all the amazing opportunities to do extra activities outside of your own research, and recently I was able to participate in a day trip down to Cambridge to take part in a seminar on Feminist Classics Revisited, discussing Ann Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society. It was a long but brilliant day out. I have also been lucky enough to attend the Visualities Research Group field trip to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park (see pics), which was a great day out and a good opportunity to reflect on the impact that the visual can have and how powerful it can be in provoking emotions, reactions etc. This can of course be linked back to research methods, where visual prompts might be used to elicit certain emotions and responses. I am still debating whether I am going to use visual methods in my own focus groups, just trying to work through what exactly I want the focus groups to achieve and whether there is a rationale for use of visual materials in this setting.

Can’t be having too much fun though (haha!) and PhD work rumbles on alongside these fun days out. I’ve done a couple of interviews with local women in the last few weeks which has really helped to develop and progress the research and add an interesting new dimension. Hopefully there should be a couple more this month as well. Recruitment is still ongoing, and I’ve managed to get a route in to Newcastle College hairdressing, popping into the salon next week to talk to some of the students, which is great. I’m also developing links with local cinemas with ‘mum and baby screenings’ and with a dance school in the area, so hopefully these will come to fruition too….

Recruiting Non-Students

Posted on 2 May, 2013 by a8906382

The preliminary analysis is now complete, and my ‘brief’ summaries of each theme turned into 30 pages and 16,000 words of analysis (predictably, oh how I like to waffle!). Apparently though, there was some good stuff in there, which was great to hear (as I said before, if the data wasn’t rich enough or wasn’t answering the research questions, there may be trouble ahead)… One thing that really came through the analysis was the ways in which students construct a student/local binary and talk about local, working women in particular (often classed and aged) ways. I need to target my remaining recruitment efforts for the second half of the interviews at non-students / locals / women who work in Newcastle. This is proving slightly more challenging than the student recruitment! I’ve almost lost count of the number of high street shops and supermarkets where the staff have kindly agreed to leave some flyers in the staff room for me, plus I’ve left some for the general public in cinemas, cafes and bars, alongside revitalising my Facebook recruitment… However this has only lead to one more interview so far so really going to have to think about what additional mechanisms I can use if these continue to prove relatively unsuccessful.

Analysis time!

Posted on 21 March, 2013 by a8906382

The last month has been an extremely busy but very exciting time for me, as I have finally started some of my analysis! After the tedious task of transcribing (which truly seems never-ending at times), I’ve been tasked with analysing some of the key themes coming through my early data (for the first 9 interviews) and – crucially – identified anything that is unexpected, new or missing. This is so important as it would be unwise to simply do all the interviews and then start analysing, only to realise the data is not rich enough or is not answering the research questions, for example. Research is a much more iterative, circular and – dare I say it! – messy process, always adapting and learning… I’m so excited to see what themes emerge from the data as I start to pull it all together!

Teaching

Posted on 28 February, 2013 by a8906382

I have been so busy teaching this past month that it hasn’t always been easy to balance my teaching commitments with PhD work. It has been so beneficial to gain teaching experience, even though – to be completely honest – it can be challenging and unpredictable at times! I think when you first start out as well, it is more of a demand on your time because you might tend to over-prepare a little (better safe than sorry eh?!)… So hopefully next year I will be a little more confident and perhaps not need to over-think it so much! Obviously, for anyone doing a PhD and considering a career in academia, I think having that first-hand experience is really important for a couple of reasons a) it looks great on the CV of course and gives you lots of valuable skills and experience to talk about b) it can help you confirm if you actually want to work in academia / teach…

Recruitment continues…

Posted on 22 January, 2013 by a8906382

Well after a nice and relaxing Christmas break it is back and full steam ahead with recruitment. I’ve presented at a couple of Newcastle Uni lectures now, and had a great opportunity today to go and talk to dance students at Newcastle College, laden down with a big stack of flyers! This has been an important step as I’m interested in talking to a wide range of both students and local young women from a broad range of backgrounds and who may be working or undertaking academic or vocational courses.

I have another interview lined up and a couple of expressions of interest, which is great, and I’m trying to make real use of social media to help raise the profile of the research – I really think there are good opportunities to be had here as social media has the potential to reach so many people.

I’ve also managed to secure some good opportunities to talk to geography students at Northumbria University, including 1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd years (this is particularly useful as it would be good to be able to interview a broad range of ages and see how age as a factor comes into the analysis).

First interview done!

Posted on 9 December, 2012 by a8906382

On 29/11 I completed my first interview! A real milestone in the project.

I’ve also printed 200 nice shiny flyers, they look great (Emily’s research flyer)!

Also been doing a bit of reading in the last few days and really enjoying engaging with the literature again, I think it can be easy for that side of your work and research to become neglected once you become caught up in the practicalities of recruitment and pilots! But it is nice to get back to, it puts everything back into context and reminds you of why you’re doing the project and what you’re passionate about finding out in the first place. Can be easy to get bogged down in the little details of what colour scheme to use for a flyer so it is nice to have a real reminder of the bigger picture!

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