I think. Therefore, I am!

After Jeanette send me a feedback of my Ethics Approval Application,I sat to ponder over the questions that I intended to ask my Focus Group Participants. I thought I might have not understood what a research involves so I participated in a psychological research myself. Experience? It was informative but I found it to be really entertaining too.

First set of proposed questions

After returning from it,I tried to get a meeting fixed with Sharon. It took over a week. I tried to do some more research and think around ways to get the most out of the focus group fro my research study. Then,I thought, that by the following questions I will just get a generalised overview of the audience. So, I thought it best to get a personality trait questionnaire from which I could categorise them into groups of people that had similar traits/preferences that might/might not result in their behavioural change. I formed some questions and I also undertook many online personality tests to find what other questions I could ask that were relevant to my research study. It took quite sometime to form a questionnaire. 

Personality Trait Questionnaire

Then came the challenge of evaluation once the Focus group was done with. Since, I had made the questionnaire in the form of a Likert Scale,I decided those behavioural traits that were positive would score the highest and the ones that were negative would score lowest. For example, on the question of 'I actively participate in recycling', if the participant ticked on Strongly Agree, he/she would get 5 points. However,if they ticked on Strongly Disagree he/she would me marked 1. Likewise, for Agree, Neutral, and Disagree he/she would be marked 4,3, and 2 respectively.

In this same fashion all the traits would  have been evaluated. However,Sharon enlightened me that since I have had no experience and there is no theory supporting my evaluation it would not hold much water. In fact,she said it would be really a waste of time to categorise as I wanted to know what the general audience feels about my film and not some specific group.

So,my week long reflection and research went down the drain. Currently, I am organising two focus groups. In the first one,I will show the gain-framed message film first and then the loss-framed. Likewise,in the second group, the loss framed film will be shown first and then the gain-framed. After each film same set of questions would be asked regarding the specific film just shown. Then,at the end,with the help of Sharon I have prepared a set of questions that are over the differences/similarities of the two films.

Revised Questionnaire(Still waiting approval)

Reflecting again!

Lately,I have been having trouble taking my research project ahead.It seems as if I have reached a point from where I can go nowhere. I have done a lot of research on the Psychological Theory. I think I understand it well. I think the method I am using to integrate with story-telling is fine too. Still,somehow,when thinking of questions that I intend to ask to my focus group participants,I am not on the right track.

Jeanette adviced me to have a talk through with Sharon about it. I am yet to get a meeting date with Sharon. However,in the meantime I decided to participate in a Research Project conducted by a 4th year Psychology Undergraduate Student whose advertisement had come up in Hermes,so that I get an overview of what might happen at one.

Her research was on how video games might affect aggressive behaviour in people. I was first asked to fill up a questionnaire regarding my general behaviour traits. Then,I played two games. Again,I had to fill up questionnaires between the two and fill up blanks of several words. The two questionnaires had almost the same questions but rephrased differently.

After participating in this I realised that, I was asking those questions to the participants that would answer the main findings for my research. Instead of digging in their psyche indirectly, I was directly asking those technical questions to them that would make no sense to them. If I would have asked such questions to my peers it would have made more sense. They would have known the technical aspects.

However,my research is audience-oriented so it will be better if I find ways to go about this research differently. Currently,I am thinking of showing my films to two different set of participants and then comparing their reviews.