In this week’s snow-affected session we looked at the problems from last week and considered each against the CAFE acronym. The results of our discussions are captured in the image below (green is for potential positives; red is for potential difficulties):
In summary, it was clear that each question would pose problems for data collection:
- The sports drinks research could be costly, time consuming and it would be difficult to control the behaviour of the participants (e.g. their diet) around the tests.
- The role model research, whilst novel, would require us to create a new procedure and would also rely of gathering data from children who are notoriously capricious. Luckily, I have some experience with this kind of research!
- The rugby participation research pits us against a problem that is complex and involves lots of variables. We discussed how difficult it is to find participants who’ve dropped out of sport, but could get around this if the university rugby society keep records of unsuccessful trialists.
All of the questions are worthy of study in my view, but they all need refining and making more specific, which will help overcome some of the problems noted above.
Since we only want to take one problem forward this week, please VOTE on your favorite in the poll below then check back on Wednesday afternoon or Thursday to see what we need to do next.