Evaluating a Design for Studying Informal Music-Making in an Area

A local authority has asked you to design a research proposal to collect qualitative data on young peoples' involvement in informal music-making in your local area, particularly girls' involvement. You chose a semi-structured interview and a representative sample using a sampling frame of young people in schools in a part of the town or city. You used multi-stage sampling to choose 4 schools with different kinds of pupils (a stratified sample), and then 10 pupils within each school. You negotiated access to the schools via a gatekeeper (the Head) and arranged to interview pupils chosen using a systematic sample of Year 10 girls chosen from the school's database.

To evaluate the design, you should identify weaknesses (no marks for discussing strengths) and use the folloiwng framework:

1. Validity - every method has some strengths and weaknesses as far as validity is concerned. This is always something you can discuss. Triangulation to check validity by using a second method is often a good solution, but remember to say which method you would add and why it would be useful to have this methods as well as the one in your design.
2. Reliability - this is a problem when collecting qualitative data using unstructured methods. It is not a weakness with structured methods.
3. Representativeness - this is an issue with a sample which is biased or small.
4. Ethical issues - if there is a risk of deceit, damage or the researcher getting involved in illegal or unethical activities. If there are no particular ethical issues, don't discuss it.
5. Practical issues - particularly time and access, as the research is funded.
6. Operationalisation - to test out whether this is right, you should use a pilot study.
7. Theoretical issues - positivists and interpretivists evaluate research in different ways. Validity is an issue for both groups, but reliability and representativenss are mainly an issue for positivists, because they want general explanations; interpretivists are more concerned with validity. These problems can often not be resolved within the terms of the research brief you have been given, as you will be told what sort of data to collect. Positivists would criticise qualitative data and the methods used to collect it; interpretivists would be unhappy with quantitative data and the methods used to collect it. You have to be careful how you write about this, and don't step outside the research brief.

You can remember these issues with the word VRREPOT, or make up a sentence to help you remember it. For example, Very Robust Researchers Expect Proper Opening Times.