Category Archives: Method

Week 8: Data collection

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A quick review of this week… We first discussed the difficulties raised in the planned research design. We then considered questions we could ask, the answers to which would allow us to determine if a young player had moved into the conventional stage of moral development (or not). I have made a list of the questions (or scenarios) on the data collection page, and also revised the design (see below).

Research design 2

The next two things to consider are:

  1. Are the questions worded such that a young player (as young as 10-years-old) could understand and answer them honestly? (we can ‘test’ them on young people if you know any); 
  2. How are we going to recruit participants for the study, and what ethical considerations would we have to make in this process?

Week 7: Designing research

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This week we tried to develop some testable hypotheses, based on the literature, and a relevant research design that would enable us to submit the hypotheses to criticism. I’ve tried to summarise these efforts in the diagram (below).

Research design

There are some problems with this type of design, though, many of which we pointed out in the session:

  1. Conducting focus groups with children and young people is difficult (do we have the skills?);
  2. This design demands at least 5 focus groups, each of which would take around 4-hours to transcribe and longer again to analyse (so well over 20-hours work);
  3. The type of data we get may not enable us to comment definitively on the hypotheses (i.e. the hypotheses imply that quantitative data might be more useful).

With these concerns in mind, it’s worth us thinking about alternative methods of data collection, which, whilst not ideal, may reflect a more realistic proposition, given the time and skills we have at our disposal.