Interviews and Focus group

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In the last 7 days I've completed 5 interviews and one focus group, and what a learning curve its been.  I found in my first interview I was trying desperately hard not to ask leading questions to get more from my participant but by the last interview I hardly had to say anything and learnt just by nodding my head and saying 'thats great, can you tell me more about 'X'' I didn't really have to do much at all! Some of the information I got from my participants was as expected and in line with a lot of the literature I found.  However, a number of stories I heard gave me a whole host of new information from a perspective I hadn't even thought about. I was lucky enough to interview 5 teachers with a combined experience of over 80 years which meant a lot of information. Thankfully another module 3 student recommended a wonderful program - otter.ai - that transcribed the conversations (with just a little bit of tweaking needed) which has been a huge time saver. 

My focus group was done after I'd completed all my interviews and its fair to say I was impressed at how much all of the parents of children who danced had to say.  Originally I was quite disappointed as a large number of participants dropped out at the last minute for one reason or another. However, I have gathered so much information from the parents who did take part I'm not sure I could have coped with the overload of more peoples input!!!  The conversation seemed to flow really well and  as I had hoped one parents idea fed to another parents with a different story to tell. I hardly did any talking, as the conversation flowed so well with so many interesting things being said. With well over an hour of focus group conversation to now analyse along with my 5 interviews its fair to say I have a busy time ahead.  Im really excited to now code, analyse and triangulate my data to see what I find. 

Comments

  1. Kirsty WalkerOctober 2, 2021 at 10:11 AM

    Hey Jen! I felt exactly the same in my first couple of interviews in terms of being super conscious of whether or not I was leading my participants in a specific direction and I too found that actually the less I say the more in depth and open my responses are. Good luck as you start your analysis process! x

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