Writing about the Method

Your paragraph about choosing the method could look something like this:

There are several methods I could use to collect qualitative data about informal music-making. The method I would use would be semi-structured interviews. I have chosen this method because it enables me to collect some reliable data by asking all the young people in my sample some questions which are the same. This would mean I could compare what they say. At the same time, I could let them talk about what music-making means to them, and this would be more valid, because they are "setting the agenda." Interpretivists would value this, as it is a more natural setting than a formal interview or postal qeustionnaire. Young people could talk about what matters to them, and this might not be what the researcher would have expected. I would use this method rather than a structured interview because the data is likely to be more valid, although the data would also be less reliable and I might have to use a smaller sample so that I could carry out all the interviews myself.

You would talk about the weaknesses when you evaluate your deisgn. You would discuss the problems of reliability and representativeness in more detail. You would concentrate on these, as these are weaknesses.