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Professor: For next week, I’d like you to undertake a piece of research in preparation for writing your final essay. In order to gain top marks, you must include a range of primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. Are there any questions?
Douglas: Yes, Professor, I have a question. We haven’t yet covered how to undertake this sort of research in much depth, and I’m a little unsure of what you want us to do. In telling us to include primary sources, do you mean you want us to design and distribute a questionnaire, analysing the results?
Professor: You could design a questionnaire, but you’ll soon find that distributing a questionnaire on such a large scale is somewhat troublesome. We couldn’t possibly expect you to do it effectively as an individual university student without the necessary resources. No, ideally I would like you to form one or two focus groups, and interview them. This will provide you with a more qualitative approach. If your strengths lie in mathematics, please by all means take a more quantitative approach, but this will be more strenuous and time consuming, and isn’t entirely necessary for the purpose of this study.
Jane: Professor, you haven’t told us what our project is about. Do we get to choose our own topic based on the previous study?
Professor: No, I’m afraid not. This will be a strictly Australian study; however, you can choose which angle you’d like to take, so long as it remains within the realm of anthropology. Does anyone have any questions specifically about the formation of the focus groups? I’ve had several emails about this, and I’d like to address it now.
Douglas: My study is related to growing up in Australia, and the question of nature versus nurture. I’ve gathered more than two hundred school children who would be happy to participate in a focus group. Do you think we’ll need to include that many participants in a focus group?
Professor: Blimey, Douglas, well done for finding that many willing children, but you definitely don’t need that many for the study you’re going to undertake. I’d say you need no more than five children per group, and no more than three groups, so fifteen children altogether. You definitely need to control the group size in order to generate a meaningful dialogue.
Douglas: OK, if it’s useful, I’ll try and do it...
Professor: I appreciate your enthusiasm for the project, but there are plenty of different ways to gather data, and I’m sure that if you look hard enough, you’ll find someone who has conducted almost the exact same research in the past. My advice for you is don’t be too ambitious, and try to include as much information about various people or sectors.
Jane: For those who haven’t ever collected original data before, what do you suggest we do?
Professor: I would suggest that you read accounts from other people who have undertaken such research to see what advice they can give. I would also encourage you to read Chapter Eight in the course textbook, which should give you a good introduction to collecting data. Moreover, you should try to practice using the data table provided in your course handbook. By now you should have read at least six or seven books giving quite detailed instruction on how to go about collecting data.
Douglas: Professor, I don’t know about everyone else, but I’m having trouble reading the books. I had a really big assignment for another course and I’ve been spending all my time on that. Jane, have you read all the books the professor mentioned?
Jane: Well, my trouble is getting hold of the books. I’ve been to the library several times, but all the books are out. Professor: Sounds like you should have started borrowing books a bit earlier. Jane: Yes, I should have. But I got several ones from my friend a couple of days ago. I just skimmed through them, and don’t remember a lot of the information.
Jane: But now let’s look at these things. We’ll need to start thinking about which ones we’ll definitely want to do for the project.
Douglas: Okay. The first one here is the final report.
Jane: If you like, we can work together on the research and data-collection side of the project, and doing the final write-up?
Douglas: Cool. That sounds good. I’m not sure how much I’d be able to contribute considering I haven’t had a chance to read the course material. But I should be able to prepare some sheets and a list of questions that can be used during the focus group sessions.
Jane: That sounds appropriate. I think so too.
Douglas: Do you think we’ll need to write a letter to send to the participants, telling them the time and place for the interviews?
Jane: Positive. I can take care of that.
Douglas: Well, that’s great.
Jane: I should also include a document for them to sign saying that they’re happy to be voice-recorded.
Douglas: Oh yes, of course. I forgot about the transcript. That’ll likely be a big job, so let’s do half each, I’ll do one of the groups and you can do the other. Okay?
Jane: Sounds like a plan!