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Pilot studies are small scale studies/groups that are performed pre
“the bigstudy’…my god what two studies?? No this saves lots of
time wasting, lots of money; wasted time spent researching questions
that may have little relevance, to those you are studying. Chill take
time at this point to develop as Weberian sociologists like to say ‘verstehen’ …a little bit of understanding i.e.;
now you can dig my world, understand me and then you can ask questions
that really hit my world!
So,
this is about finding out if
your plan is a great one and will produce a study that is generalisable,
replicable, valid and representative.
·
Young
& Willmott (always spelt his name wrong but am teaching now so I am
telling you double ll, double tt!) used this to test unambiguous
interview questions , go to Haralambos find out more
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You
can also hone in on your practical research skills
·
Time
to develop the cough medicine to overcome any research hiccups
·
Book
a doctors appointment to overcome the depression that is about to set in
when you realize you shouldn’t progress with this research
·
Honing
in on your ‘verstehen’ how do you build trust? Getting to
know your research group.
Bryman (2001) sees focus groups as a form of group interview whereby questioning is
well focused on a particular issue. He sees this type of interview as
Symbolic Interactionist in style as you can see the way in which
individuals are constructing their own meaning around the topic area.
·
This
in-depth style of interviewing is between several participants and the
interviewer,
·
But, these interviews are not representative
of the ‘real world’ so can sociologists really gather real valid
data?
·
It can
also be argued that this process of trying to gain ‘verstehen’ does
give validity to the data being produced.
·
Politicians
often favor this type of research to test public opinion
·
Like
pilot studies this can provoke tears and further research around the
issue as they discover that maybe they got it all wrong too
Task
Read this poem construct five questions
you would like to ask me around the issues raised in the poem. Do you
think you can gain ‘verstehen’? Could you seek the answer to why
someone would stay in a DV situation and subject themselves
repeated attack? Really opened myself up here but feminist say
the ‘personal is political’ therefore my life has relevance to the
study of women!
Standing
Steer
January
2002
Here I stand!
Nearly
alone in an almost home
But here I stand
I
nearly fell in the almost home
I
forgot how to stand
He
beat the path in my brain to think I could stand
I
have been in that stand
Called
a liar, “too intelligent to be hit”
As
I stood in the stand
He
sat smugly, delighting in eye contact
They
asked if he was so bad why did I go back to him repeatedly
I
stood and paused, this sick man in front of me
I
answered in that stand “I never said I didn’t love him”
I
understand now….he won’t change, drugs are not the answer to why he
beat me
He
stands straight delighting in stories of how I was injured
He
likes to torment my life, it gives him the adrenaline of existence
But
now I stood strong and he is guilty - “a wife beater”
But
there I barely stood almost fallen
Those
women who stood by me gave me strength in the stand
And
after, she stood by my bed when I forgot how to stand
She
stood for me
I
thank her!
©
Tamara
Williams
Generalisability:
the need to produce statements
from your highly localized study that will then apply to the general
public/group.
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