Within the research I intend to carry out for this project it is important to ensure that I have the representative voice of all of the different parties involved in an SSP. If I were not limited by time then it would be great to hear from students, SSP unit leaders at UAL, external organisations (clients) and from the UAL Business and Innovation team. However, having mapped out the time involved in speaking with each of these groups I decided that it would be more manageable to settle on hearing from students and staff involved in SSPs since January 2022.
As surveys are something that is relatively new to me (I’m more traditionally a qualitative researcher) I ensured to read through Converse and Presser’s (2011) text on writing survey questions. I did of course make reference to the classic Saunders et al (2019) but as that text is more aimed at business students so I referred to Kara (2015) for an alternative perspective on creative research methods.
Staff research plan:
- Reach out to the Business and Innovation teams at LCF and CSM through my connections
- Ask for a list of unit or course leaders who have run an SSP in 2021/22 academic year
- Reach out to the unit or course leaders on the list received from B&I team
- Book in interview times with staff members who have responded to initial call out
- Carry out interviews with staff members who confirmed a time for interview
- Transcribe and colour code then analyse findings to inform student survey.
Student research plan:
- After carrying out the staff interviews develop the survey questions based on findings
- Test the sense and relevance of the student survey with 2 students to ensure it works
- Reach out to the staff who took part in the interviews to send survey to their students
- Send out a reminder to complete the survey to staff to share with their students
- Analyse findings from student survey and gather key quotes for presentation.
As I work through the initial stages of my staff research plan I am beginning to struggle with recruitment of participants. This seems to be for two main reasons 1) lack of time and 2) staff being unsure about sharing their experience of SSPs. I have begun to record and keep track of why staff members are saying no to getting involved in the project as this will support further reflections and how to take my action research further in the future.
Reference list:
- Converse, J. M., Presser, S. (2011). Survey questions: handcrafting the standardized questionnaire. Thousand Oaks: Sage. https://methods-sagepub- com.arts.idm.oclc.org/book/survey-questions/n3.xml
- Kara, H. (2015) Creative research methods in the Social Sciences: A practical guide. [electronic resource]. Bristol: Policy Press. https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=6193498