I was rather excited about finally getting into real methods that I can potentially use for my own research project - and was particularly interested in the 'special concerns' that Knight describes as being relevant to face-to-face inquiry. While he provides quite a substantial and detailed list of things to keep in mind - I would have liked to learn a bit more about how to deal with situations where the participants of a face-to-face inquiry may not be providing 'true' information, or maybe somehow influenced by others. For example - I was volunteering on a project recently where a group of undergraduate students were assigned to lead face-to-face interviews with participants about their health experiences. The participants for the interviews were pre-screened for a certain income level and educational qualifications.While reviewing their interviewing experience, one of the students disclosed that the person she interviewed had mentioned his income level and educational qualifications to be much higher than the pre-screened criteria, and appeared to be lying during the interview. I was curious about how to deal with situations like this - should that interview have been dropped from the overall data analysis?
I remember discussing focus groups in a class I was taking in the Summer term, and we addressed the possibility of people being influenced about their opinion in a group of mixed gender, or simply being influenced by the opinion of others. Knight does suggest that focus groups don't necessarily prove anything - but then are they really useful? How do we decide the context in which specific face-to-face inquiry techniques maybe more suitable compared to others? Perhaps this is something that researchers learn from experience.
As for the SSHRC proposal reviewed in class last week - our group looked at the cyborg proposal. I found it interesting (among other things) that the author described him/herself upfront as a person in a wheel chair and how he/she relates to the cyborg theory addressed in the proposal. Although it was quite relevant to the proposal in this case - I was wondering how this piece of information may influence the people judging the proposals. If there was another simultaneous submission on a similar topic, submitted by someone not in a wheel-chair - would it carry the same weight? I guess there is a fine line between representing oneself as relevant to the content of the proposal vs representing oneself in a way that may influence the individuals making decisions about funding.
I remember discussing focus groups in a class I was taking in the Summer term, and we addressed the possibility of people being influenced about their opinion in a group of mixed gender, or simply being influenced by the opinion of others. Knight does suggest that focus groups don't necessarily prove anything - but then are they really useful? How do we decide the context in which specific face-to-face inquiry techniques maybe more suitable compared to others? Perhaps this is something that researchers learn from experience.
As for the SSHRC proposal reviewed in class last week - our group looked at the cyborg proposal. I found it interesting (among other things) that the author described him/herself upfront as a person in a wheel chair and how he/she relates to the cyborg theory addressed in the proposal. Although it was quite relevant to the proposal in this case - I was wondering how this piece of information may influence the people judging the proposals. If there was another simultaneous submission on a similar topic, submitted by someone not in a wheel-chair - would it carry the same weight? I guess there is a fine line between representing oneself as relevant to the content of the proposal vs representing oneself in a way that may influence the individuals making decisions about funding.
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