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Angela's Response

I've read your info (new blog and emails), and I think overall it's a promising study. However, you've done what most energetic and engaged students do when thinking about a study--you've outlined a good year or two of work. I recommend that you begin with a smaller portion. Try an interview with the ICON director, one assistant director, two graders, and then do a focus group or two with the students. Surveys usually work best when you know what some of the likely answers already are, and you can get that from interviews and focus groups. We can always talk about implementing a survey later on.

I think what you've chosen makes good sense for field methods. As a quant researcher, I'd recommend that later--after the class is over--you also consider a quant methodology to look at the same problem (if you're still interested in it, of course). For example, it's one thing for students to say in a focus group that they think the exercises are useless (or valuable, or boring, etc.). That's good stuff to know. However, it doesn't necessarily tell us if they're effective exercises. Are they having the effect on the writing that we are hoping for? To determine that, we can examing the writing reviews and subsequent drafts and see if there are any differences. Just something to think about.

Becky's Response

I think Angela's on target--that is, what you want to do is big (and, honestly, I don't mind that, because early on you realize it is, and you focus accordingly, and you get a sense of what you WILL be able to do for dissertation research in a safe situation). My only concern is this: I am wary of focus groups, especially when you're only doing one, because they tend to be "group think" unless someone very, very skillful leads them. That is, the loudest, most opiniated person becomes what the group thinks. Now--if youwere to conduct a series of focus groups, etc., but then, honestly, it's more trouble than a survey.

I would suggest going the survey route, noting that this would be a focused, preliminary survey--and you can use the information you gather from this one for a larger survey. I think that, in my experience, pilot surveys render more and more effective information than focus groups.

Rich also responded to the blog post itself