Stepping into week two of the third and final module, I feel that I have set the wheels of this inquiry in motion. Over the last week has been preparation for interviews questions, collating the interviews that I want to discuss and reaching out to many possible participants. Although, that's not how I planned it and it didn't start that way last Monday...
Learning from my mistakes
When planning this inquiry, I thought 5 interviews will provide enough data to work with in order to produce a portfolio at the end, and I had 5 individuals that I have carefully selected to ask. For some reason, I thought all 5 would be quick to respond and be as enthusiastic as I am about taking part. How wrong I was. As I checked my email inbox each day last week, I became increasingly disappointed not to see any replies. How could this be? Well, some people (mainly me) can be incredibly focused on their own busy lives without appreciating that other people have their own commitments and priorities too.
If in doubt... ask!
Last Thursday, I has a wonderful chat with my supervisor, Helen, and I spoke about my concerns and the difficulty that I have had with managing to secure anyone for an interview and I asked what I could do. She explicitly responded that I should be reaching out to about double the amount of people that I wish to interview, then I would more likely to actually secure the 5 interviews that I need. After first agreeing that this would be a much better course of action, I was faced with an ethical dilemma that I feel that I should address.
The fear of rejecting
I realised that I was concerned with asking too many people and receiving a positive response from everyone; I was worried that I would then have to reject half of them in order to avoid being overwhelmed with work and data. Could this be the reason why I initially planned to only ask the set amount of 5? It makes sense - why should I waste someone's time to email back and forth a few times, to eventually not allow them from participating. How would I know if this would affect them? Or, if I followed through with every interview, I would be left with enormous amounts of data that I couldn't possibly analyse completely, and would inevitably discard half of it. Is that unethical to then waste even more of the participants' time (and mine) to gather data when I know that I couldn't possibly use it all? Maybe it doesn't matter, and those that were happy to participate wouldn't mind whether or not I used the data at all; they might just be happy to take part. I guess, I may never know the answer to that.
But what are the repercussions?
There is, however, the risk of people feeling hurt or annoyed by this, and perhaps I feared what the consequences might be from asking theatre professionals and ruining potential or existing affiliations. This concept reverts the situation back to myself. Am I selfish for thinking this way, that I chose to act in a way that was to protect my dignity and my career? Many people will agree with this but many others will actively advocate this style of thinking. How can I progress in this career if I am not thinking about the consequences of my actions, even if it seems slightly selfish? Perhaps a happy medium would suffice.
How have I moved forward?
Over the weekend, I decided that it would be best to listen to my supervisor (not much of a surprise there) and reach out to a few more. So far, it has been a success and I have had some more responses; I will hopefully be booking some interviews for later in the week!
What dilemmas have you faced that relate to the preparation of the interviews?
No comments:
Post a Comment