With IRB approval \u201cjust around the corner\u201d (ha!), I\u2019ve been making sure everything is in place so I can hit the ground running once I get the final approval.\u00a0 That means checking back over my selection criteria for potential interviewees. \u00a0For anyone who doesn\u2019t remember, I\u2019m doing phone interviews with COASST citizen science volunteers to see how they describe science, resource management, and their role in each.<\/p>\n
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I had originally hoped to do some fancy cluster analyses to group people using the big pile of volunteer survey data I have.\u00a0 How were people answering survey questions?\u00a0 Does it depend on how long people are involved in the program, or how many birds they\u2019ve identified?\u00a0 \u2026 Nope. As far as I could tell, there were no patterns relevant to my research interests.<\/p>\n
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After a lot of digging through the survey data, I felt like I was back at square 1.\u00a0 Shawn asked me, \u201cBased on what you\u2019re interested in, what information would you NEED to be able to sort people?\u201d\u00a0 My interview questions focus on people\u2019s definitions of science and resource management, and their description of their role in COASST, science, and resource management.\u00a0 I expect their responses have a lot to do with their world view, their experience with science, and what they think about the role of science in society.\u00a0 Unfortunately, these questions were not included in the 2012 COASST volunteer survey.<\/p>\n
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As so often is the case, what I need and what I have are two different things.\u00a0 When I looked through what I do have, there were several survey questions that are at least somewhat related to my research interest.\u00a0 I\u2019ve struggled with determining which questions are the most relevant.\u00a0 Or I should say, I\u2019ve struggled with making sure I\u2019m not creating arbitrary groupings of volunteers and expecting those to hold through the analysis phase of my project.<\/p>\n
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This process of selecting interviewees off survey responses makes me excited to create my own surveys in the future!\u00a0 That way I could specifically ask questions to help me create groupings.\u00a0 Until then, I\u2019m trying to make do with what I have!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
With IRB approval \u201cjust around the corner\u201d (ha!), I\u2019ve been making sure everything is in place so I can hit the ground running once I get the final approval.\u00a0 That means checking back over my selection criteria for potential interviewees. \u00a0For anyone who doesn\u2019t remember, I\u2019m doing phone interviews with COASST citizen science volunteers to… Continue reading