The Role of the Researcher + SSHRC Sample

One thing that I found interesting this week in the Knight reading is his discussion on the role of the researcher in the process of gathering data in face-to-face inquiries. He mentions how depending on how the researcher conducts these inquiries, they can greatly influence the findings or responses of their subjects. The researcher should not take a passive role by just giving out the questions, but needs to be active in listening and understanding their subject. I remember a few times in the past where I conducted interviews where I just gave out the question and recorded the answers. Each time when I go over the findings after the interview, I realized that I should have followed up more on some of the answers by asking more questions. Knight’s point about body language is also something to think about. I remember that some of my interviewee’s would always ask if they were answering the questions correctly or if they were giving me the answers that I wanted. This made me become aware that they are watching you as a researcher as much as you are watching them as a subject. 

SSHRC SAMPLE: Social Justice & Education 

For my group we looked at the Social Justice and Education SSHRC proposal. Similar to Claire, I was also surprised that the person did not introduce themselves until the end. However, we thought that this may be because that the person’s general information was already mentioned prior to this proposal and they did not want to be redundant. Something that I found interesting was the number of citations that were in the “Methodology” section, because I assumed that most of the citations would be in the “Theoretical Framework”. I guess it is ideal to back up your approach and methods. There was one thing that I found a bit strange with this proposal. The title of the proposal got me interested with the words “cocktail party” so I thought this person developed a metaphor to help them articulate their research. However, the “cocktail party” does not appear until the 4^th paragraph. I think that if you are going to introduce a metaphor in your proposal you should write about it or explain it near the beginning of your proposal.