6B

Interview- I found the Interview actually to be the most effective of the 4 as it is the most personal and probing. The interviewee can often feel very liberated and will just be truthful, open and blunt with you as it’s a one on one conversation with no-one else to butt in, oppose them or be hurt by what they say. However it is not without its limitations, because the most effective way to interview is one on one, then it takes a lot of time and effort to gather enough data and opinions from multiple interviewees.

Survey- Strangely the survey is almost the opposite of what the Interview is but is pretty much just as effective. Its strength is that you can have many people gain access to it at one time with minimal effort, especially with the free internet site “surveymonkey.com”. It’s weakness is that it’s too simple sometimes and people can jump through it without really paying attention to what their saying, also with only limited choices to what people can choose as their answers then data can be incomplete or inaccurate. Another weakness it has is that often on survey sites you can have the option to see what other people have said and this encourages people to just go with the trend and not say what they really feel.

Focus Group- I found the focus group to be the least effective of the 4 tools. I conducted my pilot focus group with four dancers I am working with in my current production of Sleeping Beauty. I thought that it was good idea because they were people I knew and could be very easy going with. I told them what I was studying into and they discussed the topic and experiences they have had with teaching. The positive side to the focus group was that the participants could inspire new thoughts and points in each other making the discussion full and in depth without skirting around the issue, but I found that sometimes two of the participants seemed too afraid to say what they really felt or just backed down under the scrutiny of the other two so I didn’t always get a balanced argument for some of the issues raised.

Observation- The observation was a very useful tool but it had one massive flaw, because I was silently observing I couldn’t enquire as to why the teacher acted a certain way, I just had to assume with my own judgement; obviously there must have been times when I was wrong as I’m not a mind reader so I think the observation tool could lead to inaccurate assumptions in my inquiry. It’s major strength for my personal focus was that I could be on the other side for a change seeing what a rehearsal is like for the choreographer/ballet master/ artistic director etc.