"Write about one aspect of research project experience."
This is the first time that I have done a research project of this nature. And it has been a pleasant experience so far. My group only has two members including me, so there were not any communication problems, which is common to a larger project group. As messages were only passed between me and my partner, Joceyln, the messages would not be distorted or misunderstood. In addition, the progress of generating our report is pretty fast since both of us adhere tightly to the deadline. Therefore, no last minute rushing of work occurred.
The main problem we encountered was a language problem. We were not sure of which tense to use for some sentences. For example, whether we should use "may" or "might", "will" or "would" and "can" or "could". However, this problem was solved by referring to sample reports and further clarification from Mrs Richardson.
The second problem was that our survey URLs could only be sent to Science students. Therefore, our survey results were biased towards Science students. If the module coordinator could send it to all faculties of NUS, we might be able to obtain more accurate results.
A pity would be that we do not have time to conduct face to face interviews, as I believe we can obtain more insights to our survey topic. Though we had a question asking for comments in our survey, many students gave answers which were off-track. Hence, face to face interviews might be better.
Thursday, October 9, 2008
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4 comments:
Hi Theresa, I agree with your last paragraph, that there was a time constraint and that it would have helped the report if we could have gone out and done some interviews.
My group also had some problems with the surveys, with some students giving very "weird"/anomalous responses. In a way, it is not entirely the students' fault because for my group, I think that the questions that were formulated could have been better (on hindsight), such that it reduces the possibilities of having these "weird" responses. Also, for the survey we used, it was rather long and hence, most probably the students got tired of answering and therefore just filled it out without much thought.
At least after having gone through such an intensive project, we now know how to do better for future projects.
Hi Teresa,
I agree that this research project has many limitations. The most obvious one would be time. We were only given about a month to complete the whole project. That does not allow us much time to do proper planning. I took a Sociology module about two years ago and the lecturers taught me how to conduct social research. It is actually a rather elaborate process, beginning with the formulation of a hypothesis, to the choice of the type of data collection (interviews, surveys, observations, etc), to sampling and finally the analysis of the results. One of the things I had learnt then was the importance of choosing the right method of obtaining results. For example, if we want to learn about something we do not know much about, we should conduct interviews because we can gather more accurate opinions.
Despite the limitations, I guess, the project has provided us an opportunity to work through a research project and it is through detailed reflection like what you have done that we learn how to conduct better research projects in the future. =)
Hi Teresa,
You and Joceyln are really efficient and deserve praises for completing the survey report smoothly with only two members instead of the usual three. Do not need to worry about that the survey results were biased towards Science students. I am sure all the other groups, including mine, have faced the same problem.
Hi all,
Yes after this project, we can conduct better research projects in the future! Time management is very important. So, for future projects, it is best to start collecting survey results as soon as possible.
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