Chapter 6 of Robson

I'm a wee bit behind on posting but I'm here now. Robson's Chapter 6 was all about Flexible Designs, which was less boring to read about than Fixed Designs and actually applicable since it is what I plan to use for my research proposal. Before I had stated that I wanted to do grounded theory, but now that I am looking at the Box on page 6.1 I am considering doing a case study as it allows you to use multiple sources for information and there is a type of study called a Community Study, which is the "study of one or more local communities. Describes and analyses the pattern of, and relations between, main aspects of community life (politics; work; leisure; family life; etc) (Robson, 181)." I figure that fits foster kids and reading/library use pretty well.

Chapter 5 of Robson

Colin Robson's textbook Real World Research Chapter 5 was our course of study this week and focused on fixed design and its features, how to establish trustworthiness, how randomized controlled trial studies are the gold standard of research designs, and the different types of experimental and non-experimental designs. Honestly most of the information in the chapter was way over my head, being way too scientific for my taste, but some of the comments in the chapter really made me think. As I've said in my Blackboard post for Week 4, there were two quotes that stood out the most to me in the chapter. One was this sentence from page 100, which was a great way of describing how researches should establish trustworthiness and really I think for any design, fixed or flexible : "You persuade others by clear, well-written and presented, logically argued accounts which address the questions that concern them." I think if researchers can at least achieve this goal, they go a long way to making their research not only accessible to those interested in this kind of study, but for general scholarship purposes as well. Another point Robson made in Chapter 5 was on page 108, where he is discussing generalizability/external validity and brings up a very good point: "It is easy to guarantee unreliability. Carelessness, casualness and a lack of commitment on the part of the enquirer help, as does a corresponding lack of involvement by participants. Reliability is essentially a quality control issue. Punctilious attention to detail, perseverance and pride in doing a good job are all very important, but organization is the key." I think he's saying that participants in your study may not always be reliable, but with the researcher maintaining attention to detail, pride in your work and organization, reliability can be achieved. I understand that with the constant displacement of the foster care clients from one home to another that it might be hard to gather the research, especially if I have not gotten all the major permissions out of the way beforehand (which could seriously slow down the research process, but I would definitely do that before I started the study as this would be a priority). My plan was to administer the surveys at a large function, such as the Foster Parent Annual Conference where the majority of foster parent and children would be available at one location and probably ask the parents to help with the under 11 kids and the teens to do the survey on their own.

Brainstorming

Fellow classmate Jessica K. found this resource called bubbl.us where you can brainstorm in bubble forms. It is awesome for me so I can put my ideas out there to mull over and see what I want to expand on and link to the rest of my ideas. So here is my brainstorm about the research project:

Framework for Research Design

In Chapter 4, Robson puts forth five components of research design. These are:
Purpose: What is the study trying to achieve and why is it being done?
Theory: What theory will guide your study? What conceptual framework links the phenomena you are studying?
 Research questions: To what questions is the research geared to providing answers? What do you need to know to achieve the purposes of the study?
Methods: What techniques will you use to collect the data, and how will be it be analyzed and deemed to be trustworthy?
Sampling Strategy: From whom will you seek data? Where and when?

I will now attempt to answer these questions in order to put more order to my research design. 

Purpose: I would like to discover if foster kids are affected by socioeconomic factors (education and financial situations of their foster parents and biological parents) and/or constant displacement and/or age affects their reading/literacy and if this in turn affects going to the library.
Theory: This is the only part of the research design I'm not 100% sure of what they mean.
Research questions:  I would like to look at how their age may or may not affect whether the child reads or goes to the library, how the foster kid's backgrounds may or may not affect their literacy and whether or not they choose to visit the library, if their FP and/or bio parents encouraged reading or read to them, are they readers now and/or go to programs at the library - if no, what could the library do to encourage use?
Methods: I want to use questionnaire after I get parental permission (and possibly permission from foster care agency such as DSS), for the children and maybe even a separate questionnaire for the foster parents.
Sampling Strategy:  I would like to do the questionnaire with foster kids ages 5-18 (this age group may change) and possibly foster parents in my current county, maybe even at a particular agency to get a smaller sample group.