Research is Not Easy

Just a few personal musings today about the practical difficulties of research. Later this week we have a new blogger joining us on Soc Blog - Mark Gillard. Mark teaches in Cambridge. Somewhere. He may tell you a bit about himself. We are planning to get some chunky contributions going fairly soon. I will be doing a series of ‘revision notes’ and some powerpoints. I will be starting off with the revision notes and will aim to do about one per month. First one will be on research methods. Because I like research methods. And no, I haven’t forgotten my review of The Lolita Effect. I started it, but it is dire, so I will struggle on and get it done.

Research Note

I’ve been doing some interviewing today and this is just a brief note to let you have a first hand account of some qualitative research and to show all readers that research ain’t easy.

I’ve been doing qualitative interviews for a friend who runs a training company. They want to investigate how well funding is being used. The funding is provided to training companies to help the unemployed or people who have few qualifications gain skills and employment.

Practical problems. One is getting hold of people. They may not be available or may not have time, or may not want, to speak to you.

Another problem is recording the data/interview. I’m using a telephone recorder and saving it all on the computer. Trouble is, that is very laborious and time consuming. I’ve done two interviews so far today and it will take me ages to transcribe the useful bits (another problem - I will select).

Yet another problem - the questions are so damn long winded. So the interviews take around an hour each. Also, you may or may not have noticed, but people in education and training speak in the most awful bureaucratic, jargonistic manner. And you thought sociologists/sociology teachers were bad? Perhaps it’s a way of trying to make what they do sound important?

So, a few points about qualitative interviews:

Pro’s - Get lots of data, don’t put words into people’s mouth’s, high in validity. Telephone interview - advantage of not having to travel far.

Cons - Take up a lot of time, can only do a small number, may not be representative, may lack reliability (e.g. not easy to repeat - also, researchers may distort through selection). Telephone interview - changes dynamics - can’t see the person, so only suitable for certain types of interview, needs different techniques to develop rapport.