Critical Research Study

From a presentation by Julian McDougall – OCR Examiner

June 2003

Specification Requirements

Angle/ Focus – own agenda , eg advertising, kids TV, cartoons, quantity of TV, positive?educational aspects of TV

Methods

Audience – active/passive

Understanding of the field

Primary Research

Sensible conclusions – something interesting about your primary research

Examiner’s experience

Less is more in terms of data

Ask the kids – use friends/siblings – 3x kids= easy

Ask the Parents – Parents’ assumptions will be challenged by kids

Critique existing research

Poetic licence/ “spin” – how can you angle your research into something interesting

Q1 Production Log What did I do? What order? Why? Research tools

Q2 Thesis

Understanding research

Watson/ OCR A2 book

What is research/ Different kinds?

What do they have in common? Medical/ marketing…Academic research not as outcome driven – does not need a fantastic result

Simple is best

Realistic ambition

Subjectivity is good – how your bias might influence your focus group

Secondary Research – academic

Buckingham

Livingstone

Hodge and Tripp

Gauntlett

Gunter and Mcateer

You find two others – cross referenced in above? Panorama video

Significant differences

Secondary research – popular

Press – tabloids and broadsheets

Reports

Websites – lobbying groups

Panorama and other TV documentaries , eg can you live without…TV? Parental controls over quantity

Industry issues – BBC critique of reality TV

Hypothesis

Test out an idea/ a hunch

Research questions

Don’t start with this – work this out after secondary research – the journey

Changing / evolving the focus is good

Focus on “how” questions not “do”

What audiences think not whether actions can be changed by the media

The Angle/ focus

New – primary will be new Qs to audience who haven’t been asked them before

Specific

Local

Linked to texts or issues – not abstract

Easy data generation

Always about ideas

Never about effects/ behaviour

Should arise from access to kids, etc

Textual Analysis

Use your AS skills to analyse focus texts – part of the hunch, eg project on junk food advertising related to student’s choice of food

Own interpretations to be written in – celebrate subjectivity- selection of clips – your own choice

Students can be objects of own research

Primary research – Paper

Questionnaire design – skills needed

Produce bad questionnaires

First – blunt data acquisition (quantitative). Ten people: four kids & six adults ; pick out variants

Second – selecting sample from data (demographic)

Third – open questions for discourse analysis (qualitative) . Why are adults lying about the amount of TV their children watch

Fourth – request follow up

Primary Research – people

Interview – construction

Focus groups

Recording – major issues to approach

Permission/ethics

Participant/non-participant- reflection

Discourse analysis/ Self-presentation and identity- never objective/ transparent

Data

Teaching on research schools/ methodologies

Bad research needed for evaluation- something wrong , wrong Qs, talking too much,etc

Mistakes to lead into good practice – then I did this

What is it? No assumptions

Away from scientific notions – no big debates on subjectivity/objectivity

Gathering/transcription/analysis-time – more is less; max 2 weeks for data

Findings

Data selection

Data analysis – share and present findings in groups

Conclusions

Returning to secondary work – last assignment needed

“Spin”

Relating primary to secondary

Gaps filled?

The field extended through local application

Link quotes to findings

Be sensible- different contexts/time scales/ resources – it is easier for Buckingham

Postmodern approaches

Researcher as reflective object of study

How do I think about all of this?

Are my thoughts changing?

How am I constructed?