So I started my research this week, collating the quantitative data I needed to identify the groups for my qualitative research. It has been an interesting process so far as it turns out out appointment record is over 26,000 records and this doesn’t even include workshop data! At this stage I am pleased I chose to focus on only on the data from the current academic year as this certainly narrows down the total number of records and makes it a lot more manageable for this mini-project.
I am however starting to get REALLY worried about what little time we have left. To ensure I am (somewhat) on track, I have decided not to analyse workshop attendance and to only focus on appointment attendance for the disengagement analysis. While this is unfortunate, this doesn’t concern me too much. The sole aim of this stage is just to identifying which groups to research. Essentially I need to get this over and done with QUICKLY so I can make a start on my interviews… while there is still time… just…
Reliability has been a bit of a shocker. I thought our data would be solid, but I have spotted problems. There has been some human error (unless we really did have a 102 year old student on a theater course…) and the data extraction has caused some problems too (some engagements are double and treble recording where a student is on multiple programmes in a session). Suffice to say I think I’ll be nipping back to readdress reliability concerns in the plan.
So… Somehow I need to get this stage and my completed plan done before the end of this month. This will give me around 10 days for data collection/analysis and a week for my summary/reflection. It feels like it will take a miracle. But then again – it is only a ‘mini’ project…