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Purpose Doing this activity will give you practice at developing a plan for conducting field research. You will develop an understanding of the many choices that you have to make in order to collect valid data. Due to time constraints there will be a larger emphasis placed on the planning stage than on actually conducting the research. Scenario The Humanities, Social Science, and Education (HSSE) Library has just undergone significant remodeling. The library staff wants to know what types of problems, library patrons (i.e., anybody who uses the library) are experiencing since the remodeling. You have been charged with the responsibility of learning about patrons use of the new space and attitudes towards various features that this new space offers. Research Questions As a class, develop a set of research questions that will help you to address the needs of HSSE's staff. Do not forget that research questions are the questions that address the problem or the need. After you have developed your research questions, you decide which research methods (e.g., interviews, surveys, observations, textual) will help you to answer these questions. Part 1, Interview & Questionnaires Interviews and Questionnaires would allow you to learn people's knowledge, attitudes and opinions about a particular topic. For the first part of this exercise, you and your group will develop a research plan for answering the research questions by either conducting interviews or distributing questionnaires. The plan will include 1) a detailed description of how you will collect data, 2) the research tool, and 3) a justification of the plan. Remember that a research tool is what you use to facilitate the collection of data (e.g., the set of interview questions, the actual questionnaire that participants receive). Work with your group to develop a research tool using the assigned method:
Observations allow you to see how people interact with each other or interact with their surrounding. For the second part of this exercise you will develop a plan that will help guide your observation of the space. When you conduct an observation, you need to know what you should be looking at and what you should be looking for. Therefore, like a interview or survey, you should develop a tool to guide your data collection.
When conducting qualitative research, as you have, you will want to bring the data from your different research methods together so that you can answer your research questions. Once you have answers to your research questions, you can 1) pose recommendations, present arguments, or inform people, or you can 2) use these results to develop more refined research questions that you use to collect more data on the given topic.
Submitting Your Fieldwork Exercises After completing the data grid, each group will submit the following work in a single pack...
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