The aim of this assignment is to develop your qualitative data gathering and analysis skills.
The focus will be on gathering and analysing interview data, with a focus on information needs and how people make sense of information and use it in decision making. The activity will take place over the first five weeks of Interaction Science.
The theme will be: being a student on a new course (such as this MSc). The aim of your study is to understand how people used information resources in preparation for joining a new programme this year – whether that was about deciding whether to take the course this year or defer, whether to come to London or not, or other information they needed to get started on a new course.
The immediate focus is not on how to redesign or evaluate particular resources, but on assessing how theories of sensemaking apply to this challenge (being a student on a new course this year). You might find that they fit perfectly, or that they need to be extended or adapted, based on your data.
Week 1: After the first online teaching session, you should review section 2.3 and chapter 4 of Blandford & Attfield (2010). You should also locate a paper or chapter of your own choice on the theme of sense making.
You should use these resources to plan questions you might ask people in an interview study on the theme of how people make sense of information and use that information in decision making during the transition to studying on a new programme (particularly this year).
While planning, you should keep notes on why you have planned to include particular questions (or considered and rejected other questions), and why you have structured your interview plan in a particular way. You should arrive at the second online teaching session with a draft interview plan. The interview should take 10-12 minutes.
Week 2: During the second online teaching session, in the group working time, you should review and refine your interview plan, then conduct one interview with a classmate. You should also expect to be interviewed by a classmate; it’s important to experience this activity from both sides! (Note: if your interviewee is a continuing student, their experience will be different, but they’ll still have had to make sense of information to make decisions about the current academic year.) If time and logistics permit, you should also observe a third interview without actively participating.
Following these interviews, you should constructively critique each other’s interview scripts and interview practice – how could they be better?
After the group working, you should refine your interview plan (if necessary) and recruit one more interviewee.
Both interviews should be conducted in English. You should transcribe both of your interviews (ensuring that the data is anonymised) and securely delete the original audio data once you have checked your transcription. You should upload both of your transcripts to Moodle before the next lecture.
Week 3: During the third online teaching session, you will conduct a top-down analysis based on the theories you reviewed earlier. This will involve applying a defined coding scheme [to be provided in class] to your data. For this, you will share transcripts with each other. We will focus on “hand coding”, using non-specialist tools such as coloured pens and post-it notes. After the third lecture session, you should extend your top-down analysis to analyse a minimum of six transcripts.
Week 4: During and after the fourth lecture, you will conduct a bottom-up analysis of the same interview transcripts. This will involve developing a coding scheme based on what you see in the data. For this, you should “forget” about the theory and focus on the data. What do you notice in the data when you conduct an inductive analysis that you did not notice previously? You should aim to construct a causal/process narrative based on your data.
Week 5: During the final lecture in this block on qualitative studies, we will consider how to synthesise findings across all of you. We will also review the coursework brief related to this activity.
Part A of the coursework is divided between two parts:
1. Writing up your study [25 marks]
2. Writing up rationale and lessons learned [25 marks]
A1: Writing up your study [25 marks]
You should write an extended abstract of your study, presenting the aims, background, methods, results, discussion and conclusions of your study.
The word limit for the extended abstract is 1,000 words, excluding references (max. 5 references).
A2: Writing up rationale and lessons learned [25 marks]
You should report on your rationale and insights from your interviews and data analysis.
1. In planning your interviews, what was your initial rationale for your topic guide? Did you adapt the topic guide at any point(s), and if so why? Did either of your interviewees surprise you with their responses? What worked well and what didn’t? When you were interviewed, observed other interview(s), and reviewed other people’s transcripts, did you note any questions or styles that worked particularly well or poorly?
2. You conducted both a top-down and a bottom-up analysis on the same dataset. Which data analysis style did you find easier, and why? Which did you gain the most insights from? If you were to conduct such an analysis again, what would you do the same or differently?
3. In this activity, you have focused on qualitative data collection and analysis based on interviews. Based on this limited study, what do you perceive as the key strengths and limitations of qualitative research?
The word limit for the rationale and lessons learned is 1,000 words.
