Skype Call 15th November 2018 – What if you can’t Interview Anyone?

Skype Call 15^th November 2018 – What if you can’t Interview Anyone?

During today’s Skype Call we discussed the possibility of what would happen / what we would need to do in order to proceed with our inquires if we could not Interview, observe or hand out questionnaires. If we were unable to generate any new data we would only be able to solely look at what is already out there.

Prior to today’s call this situation had never crossed my mind. Analysis is extremely important within my inquiry as it not only helps to map out my research project but it also produces supporting evidence.

I have chosen to both interview and hand out questionnaires as when I piloted a survey / closed questionnaire it felt extremely impersonal and did not help me to discover more about my inquiry topic; does the context a dancer performs in change the way they dance.

If I was unable to engage with another human being for my analysis, I would then heavily rely on my own reflective journal as well as literature that has already been published.

I have kept a reflective journal for a number of years going into detail of my audition experiences, general feelings throughout the day and entries from successful / important days in my life. I went into much more detail recently when embarking on the BAPP course and have lots of entries from Module 1. With these extracts I will be able to analyse how I was feeling, my emotions during the day and use this as a data collection tool to then compare to the literature about what other people think. When I say compare I mean my thoughts about how auditions, rehearsals and performances made me feel and seeing similarities and differences between what other ballet dancers have published in literature.

There may be a problem with only having my reflective journal and literature as how do I then decide which information is correct? There is no right or wrong as it is all opinion, without being able to ask any human beings I am unable to bring in a third party to weigh up the decision. As I am trying to almost find the truth I must then look into any themes that have emerged and compare them to one another. Comparing what themes come up in the literature and what sort of themes come up in the journal. Analysing almost.

It is very unlikely there’s a piece of literature from a dancer who performs well in all contexts as this will not result in anything other than the dancer writing about how good she is however it is likely that someone who notices a difference in the success of their performances when performing in different contexts may not necessarily have produced a piece of literature on this specifically but could have written about how much her performance improves on stage with an audience as opposed to rehearsing in a studio and then I would be able to relate this to my inquiry.

It is very easy when you interview someone to just get them to answer the question for you and to take whatever they say as the answer e.g. 4 people said yes. That is quantative data whereas with qualitative data which is what I am using in my inquiry numbers aren’t important. The interview isn’t about trying to find the answer to the question just trying to find out more. Semi structured interviews allow themes to emerge if you find it within other data. It also tells you what people value as what they think will be important for others to know.

I am going to know more about the inquiry topic than my participants as I have looked at the literature and it as a culture, the different elements in it and the factors that may affect people’s performances. We don’t normally give ourselves time to do this therefore I have more knowledge on the topic.

I will have the knowledge to build and examples to show that everyone who has already tried things prior to myself can support me rather than trying to find out an answer from the horse’s mouth. I need to think more about what layers I can unpack without starting a new layer as when you interview someone you are birthing new ideas and this session is about thinking about before you do that; looking at ideas that you can use to help prior.

People opinions are great but not always useful as there’s not much you can say about it but if you’ve done the background work before the interview you can compare things to prior knowledge.