Focus Group

Focus Group is one of effective research methods used to collect information and opinions from other people. It is a form of qualitative research in which group of people are asked about their perceptions, opinions, beliefs, and attitudes towards a product, service, concept, advertisement, idea, or packaging. The number of people in a focus group is from 6 to 12, but the ideal number is 8 people. It can understand as and group interaction to collect data, self- experiences and find out why and how people think that way.

The method is conducted in an informal and natural way where respondents are free to give views from any aspect around the topic. The facilitator will prepare the questions following the topic and ask for people idea and suggestion about that. The advantage of the research method is that you can have rich information from lots of people at the same time. It can generate more critical comments as compared to having one-to-one interviews. Interaction between participants in focus group can be used to encourage research participants to generate and explore their own questions and develop their own analysis of common experiences.

Beside that focus group also have disadvantage like social disability effect- people shy to speak out if their opinion is different from others. During the discussion maybe there are some people disagree with other’s idea. If it turns into serious situation, the facilitator will need to calm them down. For some topic, if the target audience is children at young age, it’s also a challenge to conduct the discussion.

We did a focus group discussion last week. The facilitator is one of our friends and the topic is her FYP topic “Evolution of the Earth”. She opened the discussion by asking us after 500 years what would happen: technology, environment, society etc. We spoke out lots of our opinion and suggestion for her. But I noticed that there’s one our friends didn’t really say out anything. Because she said everything she was going to say, we all spoke out already :/ So we didn’t really get any of her sharing about the topic. It’s also one of the disadvantages of this research method.

Anyways, I still vote for this method because of the richness of information that I can gather during a short period of time. J

MOVIE REFLECTION “AVATAR”

There are three types of data collection methods in Field Studies. Intensive Interviewing, Group Interviewing and Observations.

1)   In Intensive Interviewing, the person giving the information is called an “informant”. Nam the “informant” in the movie and explain how he/she shares information with the researcher.

In the movie the Infomant is Neytiri because she is the one who teach Jake about the culture, language and people of Omaticaya. She helps Jake (researcher) to become one of the people of this tribe, closer the distance between normal human and tribe Omaticaya.

In Field Studies, there’re four types of researchers. Overt Participant Observer, Over Non- Participant Observer, Covert Participant Observer and Covert Non- Participant Observer

2)   The researchers in the movie are overt observers. Name the character that is a participant observer and the one that is a non- participant observer. Describe how both of them collect information.

In the movie, Dr. Grace Augustine is a non- participant observer and Jake Sully is a participant Observer.

For Dr. Grace, although she had her own avatar and she did a lot of research about Pandora and tribe Omaticaya but she didn’t really involve the activities in Pandora. She collected information by watching Jake and others people in the tribe did and noted it down.

For Jake, he really stepped inside tribe Omaticaya’s shoe. He learnt a lot of thing: how to create Tsaheylu to ride direhourse, how to use bow to hunt and how to be a part of the tribe. He learnt the culture and language of Omaticaya. And he did the video log to record all his information.

Field Study is a combination of emic and etic research.

3)   In the movie, describe the kind of information gathered that can be constituted as emic/etic data

Etic data is the data collected through existing theory. The information that Colonel Miles Quaritch gets is from Jake, Dr.Grace, Norm,… He watched the subjects of his study and he only had a surface understanding about Pandora and Omaticaya. In an easy way to understand etic data is the data you collect when you’re outside and looking in. What you can see and understand from your perspective is etic data.

Emic data, in the other side, is the data collected by real events that occurred and self- experience. The information that Jake’s collected is emic data. He really stepped in the Omaticaya society and tried to become one of them. The things that he learnt were from Neytiri- a girl from that tribe. The video he recorded was based on this real experience from Pandora. Therefor he had deeper understanding about the culture, language and the people of Omaticaya.

Visual Anthropology and Photo Ethnogryphy

Nowadays Visual Anthropology and Photo Ethnography are getting more and more popular. It is everywhere, people use it for a lot of reasons. Some use it for research, others use it for better understand and even use it as a form of teaching. Many producers and directors also use these methods for their movies because it can help relay a message even if it is fiction. If you get the right techniques then even a fictional movie can be relatable or have a deeper meaning.

Personally I like these two methods because photos and videos are always eye-catching more than only words. To add in, it’s easier to express your feeling and emotion through photos and videos. A presentation without any photo or video is boring to me and usually makes me fall asleep. Beside that, by asking the research participant to document an aspect of their life with photography, it helps provide the researcher with more insight into the context that they're studying. Visual Anthropology and Photo Ethnography is a great way to gain more empathy for your user. When the participant records information for you, you're able to experience the scenario from their perspective. From there, you can create a product, a design or find a suitable solution for the users.

However, the methods also have some disadvantages. Because it uses photo and video to analyze and gather information so it’s quite time- consuming. Sometimes to find participants to help you conduct this method is also a problem. Some difficult and sensitive topics are very hard for you to find participant to document that topic.

I am a kind of person who interested in photos and videos more than only words. I prefer visual expression and find it easier to express myself with pictures, stories, and music. That is why I want to use this method. Visual anthropology is also suitable for people who are uncomfortable and often uncommunicative in new situations or have short attention spans and need continual stimulation to keep them focused. To me, sometimes visual can be more important than written text.

Formative and Summative Research

In my FYP, there are several types of research method I can use to support my project. Two of the most common kinds of research are Formative Research and Summative Research. Each of the methods have their own importance but both of it is quite useful for people who want to do some research for their project.

Formative research is a kind of developmental research or action research that is intended to improve design theory for designing instructional practices or processes. It’s usually used to determine and refine the project planning process, provides accurate, up-to-date information to strategically develop that project. Formative research is used during their development or early implementation of the design project to guide the entire process. In this type of research, they could use many methods and different sources to take into account different perspectives and crosscheck the data obtained. Formative Research is important because By using this research method, people are able to identify problems at an early stage of process and refine as needed, pinpoint and highlighting data in programs, to gain insight into the subject the project deals with, helps in problem identification and helps researchers have a better understanding of its target audience.

Meanwhile, Summative research is done at the end of a project and is used to determine its success. It can also gauge customer satisfaction or aid in the development of future projects. Summative research is used to frame the outcome of an investigative process. It’s usually use to collecting assessments data that allows teachers to evaluate the growth of their students. The data is used to reflect on the way of teaching and make necessary adjustments depending on the results, as well as to judge the efficiency of the program/course itself. People conduct summative research by collecting data through questionnaires, surveys, interviews, observations and testing. The important thing about summative research is that people can evaluate a project through the final outcome, so that they can take it as an experience to improve on the next project.

However, the final outcome is not always reflecting correctly the whole process.  For example it a student did very good job during his studying period. On the day of final exam for some reason, he couldn’t make it well. So does it he fails for all that semester? Personally I think that in order to have an accurate result, we should use both Formative and Summative Research. Each methods has their own pros and cons, so it can support each others to come out with the most accurate result.