Spring 2004

English 101.10 -- Language and Composition I

Primary Research: Gathering Data Through Observation, Interview and Survey

So far, you've had the opportunity to write papers focused around an audience or forum, and that drew on your own experiences and library and web research. This next paper will be similar, except you will gather some primary, or first-hand, data on your own through survey, interview or observation.

Please refer to the sites I've posted in each section. Read over all of them to get an overview of the different suggestions or guidelines these writers have suggested.

All of these research forms have in common that they begin with having a question you are trying to answer or learn about. Begin with what you want to learn from the data and build your questions or observational plan from that foundation. At the same time, keep your eyes open for any unusual or unexpected results that occur, or new questions that come to mind as a result of your research. These new questions can be discussed in the conclusion of your essay as opportunities for future research.

Remember to 'hedge' appropriately in your essay, with *appropriately* being the operative word. 'Hedging' in this sense means to be honest about the limitations of your research by not claiming that your data means more than it really does. For example, "Three fourths of the survey respondents (15 out of 20) indicated that they are against animal testing for cosmetics, suggesting that a majority of college students are likely to not support testing " is much better than "Most college students do not support animal testing for cosmetics." The first version identitifies the limits of the conclusions that can be drawn by providing specific information, and it also frames the conclusion in a tentiive way by claiming only that "it is likely" that based on the data college students will not support testing; the second version states the information as a general fact without giving any indication about it's possible limitations.

Surveys
Resource: Guide to Writing Survey Questions

You should have between 7 and 25 survey Questions. Too many questions might make people reluctant to take the time to respond. Too few questions might leave you with results you can't say much about.

Some common questions types include:

• Yes/no
  
• Always/sometimes/never
  
• Range (Do you begin reading a new book once a week, every 1-2 weeks, once a month, every 2-3 months, every six months, once a year),
  
• Multiple-choice
• Fill in the blank
  
• Open-ended or short essay
  

The number and types of questions will be determined by what you want to know and what kind of conclusions you want to be able to make.

You should get at least 20-50 returned surveys for this assignment. The larger your sample size (number of surveys returned), the more accurate your results are likely to be. If your research plan is similar to someone else's, it might be a good idea to work together to conduct the surveys so that you will each have more survey responses to work with.

At some point in your essay, you will want to describe your methodology, including how many people you surveyed, how many people responded to the surveys, and who was included in the 'sample' (the types of people included in the research).

Observations
The first rule of observations (or any research) is that it shouldn't harm, embarrass, or misrepresent the people you observe. You must take care to keep the identities of those you observe anonymous, both in terms of not using their names and by not including information that would clearly identify them.

Observations don't always have to include people. You might, for example, observe the weather (provided you could think of something interesting to say about it). The link below contains several examples of different types of observations you might conduct.

Resource: Some General Ideas That Can Be Adapted For Projects and Data Survey (While the examples are more geared for a statistics class, most of the projects could be modified to work within the context of Paper 4.)

You will need to, at some point, have decided on something specific you will look for in the observations. Often, the most successful observations are ones that don't simply report behavior, but make connections to concepts, theories, or other types of claims.

For example, instead of looking at how people have written their narrative papers and comparing and contrasting different approaches, you might ask them to take a short online version of the Myers-Briggs personality test and then analyze the narratives for elements that reflect the different personality types. Or, you might look at their process writings for difference in what people do as they write. Your paper could be focused on determining whether or not personality makes a difference in how people write. Another option is to cross-reference whatever your topic is with the idea of personality type. For example: How does personality type affect people's views on the war (if it has an effect)? How does personality correspond with how much time students spend studying (if it does)? etc. You can use any theory or other concept as a way to view or inform your topic, and that tends to make papers more interesting and complex.

Interviews
Resource: How to Plan and Conduct an Interview