By P. Ben. Pensacola Christian College.

Someone who does not want to attend usually makes it clear during the discussion buy cheap benemid 500mg online. X If someone is in a position of power they should not be included in the group as it may stop others airing their opinions discount benemid 500 mg amex, although this is not always possible, as Ex- ample 7 illustrates. EXAMPLE 7: SIMON I was conducting a focus group with workers in a toy factory. Everyone in the group worked on a production line, but unfortunately their supervisor, who’d arranged for me to run the group, insisted on sitting in on the group. I’d worked in that factory as a temp over the summer holidays and I knew that the supervisor was viewed as a bit of tyrant. I’d tried desperately to make sure she didn’t come to the discussion, but there was nothing I could do. Sure enough, throughout the discus- sion if someone said something which was against com- 84 / PRACTICAL RESEARCH METHODS pany policy she would contradict them or say that it simply wasn’t true. I had to go and see each person after the group and I got some really interesting information when the supervisor wasn’t present. But of course it wasn’t re- corded properly and I was unsure of how I could use that information in my research. I wanted to arrange another group, but I just knew it would be impossible without the supervisor present. In the end I had to for- get about that place and hold another focus group in another factory. X Visit the venue and check it is free from background noises, distractions and interruptions. X Telephone participants the day before the focus group to check they’re still intending to participate.

For example effective 500 mg benemid, if you’re leaning towards quantitative re- search discount benemid 500mg fast delivery, survey work in the form of a questionnaire or structured interviews may be appropriate. If you’re inter- estedinactionresearch,itmightbeusefultofindout more about semi-structured interviewing or focus groups. In quantitative research you can define your research methods early in the planning stage. You know what you want to find out and you can decide upon the best way to obtain the information. Also, you will be able to decide early on how many people you need to contact (see Chapter 5). However, in some types of qualitative re- search it may be difficult to define your methods specifi- cally. You may decide that semi-structured interviews would be useful, although you’re not sure, in the planning stages, how many you will need to conduct. You may find also that you need to use other methods as the research progresses. Maybe you want to run a focus group to see what people think about the hypotheses you have gener- 34 / PRACTICAL RESEARCH METHODS ated from the interviews. Or perhaps you need to spend some time in the field observing something which has aris- en during the interview stage. De¢ning needs and means It is not necessary to use only one research method, although many projects do this. A combination of meth- ods can be desirable as it enables you to overcome the dif- ferent weaknesses inherent in all methods. What you must be aware of, however, when deciding upon your methods, are the constraints under which you will have to work. There’s no point deciding that a large scale, national post- al survey is the best way to do your research if you only have a budget of £50 and two months in which to com- plete your work. Also, you need to think about the purpose of your re- search as this will help point to the most appropriate methods to use. For example, if you want to describe in detail the experiences of a group of women trying to set up and run a charity, you wouldn’t send them a closed- ended questionnaire.