Reflecting on the piloted tools 6B

After conducting my research I’ve come to the conclusion that in order to achieve the best results I’m going to have to use more than one of the tools of gathering information.

Conducting surveys is a good idea. I found it the best way to see patterns and trends among specific questions. The down side to conducting surveys is that you obviously only get answers to the questions you ask. What I mean is that you can’t really find out enough about one situation or the reasons behind an answer. I also think that surveys are a bit too impersonal, it’s easy to not quite tell the whole truth and people may be unwilling to fill one in therefore it is difficult to get people to participate. They are however useful to find patterns and problems which could be of use to research into and also useful as evidence of problems.

Interviewing others is a lot more difficult than I had originally thought. I, like many others on the course found it was difficult to keep up with the note taking whilst asking questions. A Dictaphone is a very good idea and would also be useful as evidence for the inquiry.

 Sometimes it was difficult to stick to the questions I originally wanted to ask and I realised that I needed to really plan the questions to get the information off the participant that I truly wanted.

I also found it hard to get a happy medium of formality. If the interview was too formal then the interviewee was less likely to relax into the interview and the information I would then receive from them would be a bit like the survey – they would be unlikely to elaborate on their answers. However, if the interview was too informal then we were more likely to go off at tangents and stray from the questions that I was supposed to be asking and in some cases the candidate may also not take the interview as seriously as I would have perhaps needed them too.

Observations were pleasing in the results. I found that if I was taking part in the situation and not an “onlooker” that I would get the natural results that I would be after and a lot of my questions would be answered as I’d see certain situations happen.

Observations will be a great way for me to gather information for my inquiry as I will already be in a situation with my work where this will be possible while I am taking part in rehearsals.

I have already noticed situations where dancers are at possible risk of injury such as:

•        Not keeping warm in the rehearsal when not being used.
•          Repetition of movements whilst learning choreography.
•          Girls rehearsing in heels for substantial amounts of time.

I have also noticed situations where the risk of injury has been reduced:

•          A full cast warm up takes place everyday
•          Dancers are given a good amount of time to rest between rehearsals.
•          There are enough swings to cover so less pressure to dance through injury.

It would be beneficial if I could also observe other companies in order to compare different company rules and policies. This way I will be able to discover where most of the injury risks lie, if and how different companies do certain things to prevent injuries and what needs to be bought to dancers’ attention in order to help themselves hopefully prevent or work through injury.

Conducting focus groups was quite intimidating. I only managed a couple of people at a time as I really didn’t feel confident enough with more people. I found that the small groups I interviewed flowed quite well although maybe someone with a stronger opinion would lead the other person into agreeing with what they were saying if perhaps they didn’t or didn’t as strongly as they did. I would like to try an online focus group to discuss with different associates who belong to different companies. This will take a lot of planning as there could be issues with time zones and the participants obtaining internet access but would be beneficial to again gather information and compare the different results.

Prior to piloting the different tools of gathering information I was sure that the data I would need to collect for my inquiry would be qualitative as I would need to know details behind injury and personal situations. However through taking surveys and also through reading up on previous literature that has been written about dance injury I have learned how important gathering quantitative data will also be for my inquiry. I hope to compare the results and numbers to inquiries that have taken place in the past. How do my results differ from their findings? Do dancers know more now? Has anything changed? What actions/ technology have been put in to place to help prevent injury for dancers and is it working?