🎙️ 7. Thinking About Primary Research

Are You Where You Should Be?

This is Module 7: Thinking About Primary Research, which should be completed between 3/8 - 3/14. If you haven’t completed everything in Module 6, go back and finish all outstanding tasks now. Don’t forget to click on and review each resource in this guide.

Goals and Checklist

• Learn what primary research is
• Learn to distinguish between types of interview questions and when to use them
• Practice writing interview questions through a process of reverse engineering

To help with various access needs, including task identification and separation and advance notice, I’ll include an abbreviated list of tasks at the top of each weekly module. You can check these items off, but your input won’t be saved after you close this window. You remain responsible for checking the Calendar and ensuring that you’re completing everything in a timely fashion.

General Feedback Page

Make sure to reference the General Feedback page for feedback!

Using Feedback

From now until the end of the semester, you’re tasked with revising your paper using feedback you get from your teammates after workshop and from me in #classroom Q&A, one-on-one coffee chats, and comments after the second draft in each unit is submitted to me.

The best way to approach revision and writing is to change your writing habits. As Cassuto (2024) says, “Writing is thinking, not just a record of your thoughts. Only by actually writing do you figure out what you want to say, and how you should say it.” One of the hardest parts of research for student writers is letting go of ideas like “what a good paper sounds like” or “what a college professor wants to read” or “I need to make a point and prove it instead of exploring and thinking on the page.”

But apart from being bound by the assignment guidelines — i.e. if you don’t do what the assignment asks you to do in the spirit that you’re asked to do it, you won’t receive credit for the assignment — research writing is really a process of ever-deepening and changing thinking.

Ballenger (2018) says that good questions have the power to open doors to discovery, even with things you might consider uninteresting. Research is a messy, imperfect process, with lots of missteps, unexpected turns, and conclusions that are no less important for diverging from the initial research questions.

At this initial stage, revising isn’t about editing words, it’s about thinking about the decisions behind big and small choices that make your paper what it is, and thinking about your own instincts as a reader.

🛑 Stop! Revisit Old Free Writing

In Module 1, you wrote (in your notes) a list of disciplinary features you noticed in published scholarship in your discipline. Compare this list to your draft. How focused are the research hypotheses in the published article compared to yours? How precise is the language? Does the published article provide the writer’s inner monologue about their writing process, i.e. I read some articles, I thought I would do this, etc., or simulate authority as described in previous modules?

For a running list of feedback collected from my responses to you in your #team channels and first-draft workshops, check out the General Feedback page.

🛑 Stop! Free Write:

In your notes, write the “walkthrough” for me to replicate your exact process of writing this paper. If and when you have questions for me about your draft, I’ll ask you to share this walkthrough to better identify the places in your research writing process where the problem arose.

If you struggle to recognize where you’re making assumptions, try searching Google Scholar, or ask yourself, “Does my professor believe this?” If you can’t be sure that I would be able to confidently agree with what you’re saying after doing some research of my own, then don’t present the statement as a universal fact.

Here’s an example: Just because your experience in online classes isn’t good, or you’ve taken courses with instructors who aren’t trained in online teaching, doesn’t mean online courses or effective digital pedagogy are new to education.Repeated scholarship searches using terms that are properly narrow and complex would easily uncover this fact, while simplistic, single searches wouldn’t — thus, presenting such a statement as fact implies your research was not appropriately conducted.

What Is Primary Research?

This is a semester-long assignment, so sometimes you’ll need to look ahead to later units of drafting to make sure you’re thinking about the bigger picture throughout the drafting process. This week, you’ll look ahead to the Results section in Unit 3, which will use data from interviews you’ll be conducting later.

You’ll conduct interviews for the primary research component of the Qualitative Research Paper. Secondary research is library research, while primary research involves gathering data from original sources — through interviews and unanalyzed vlogs, in this class.

Thinking About Interviews

In this module, we’ll begin thinking about the process of designing and conducting interviews.

It’s important to prepare clear, unbiased, and openended questions to guide a successful qualitative interview. An effective interview starts with a few (maybe 5-8) open-ended clear and unbiased questions that allow respondents to explore your topic in depth. Asking “how” or “why” questions almost always allow for this kind of exploration. “What” questions are trickier, but if they invite answers that are longer than one word or phrase, they can work well, too.

Cluster questions around similar topics so your participants’ responses more easily flow from one to the next. A semi-structured interview approach might be preferred, where you have a few structured (scripted) questions and looser topics that permit follow-up or clarification questions after a respondent answers. Interviews should be recorded and transcribed (by hand or using a built-in automated transcript, a feature that Zoom and other videoconferencing platforms have) and then coded.

Interviews aren’t designed to collect participants’ unstructured opinions but to give you the chance to assess the attitudes of individuals in the discourse community you’re investigating. A well-designed question — complex, not leading — can elicit a response full of speech patterns that can highlight feelings and philosophies that might otherwise not be obvious in your secondary research. Open-ended interviews give the interviewee the opportunity to think about and elaborate on their responses, leading to more thoughtful and useful information.

Interviews permit you to gain insight into individuals and their communities by directly communicating with members of a group you’re studying. Interviews need to be designed ethically and in a manner that makes them somewhat replicable, like using the same set of core questions for all your interviewees.

Contacting Interviewees

Don’t Do This Yet!

Draft a template email using the information provided below, but don’t send out emails just yet. In future weeks, you’ll have the chance to propose potential interviewees and send emails to them once I’ve had a chance to offer feedback and approve them.

How you contact your interviewees will depend on your relationship with them. In this class, you won’t be interviewing anyone you don’t already have a good relationship with (because it’s unlikely a stranger would agree to be interviewed for a single unpublished school paper).

When you reach out, make sure to say:

• Your name
• That you’re a Pace University student
• What the assignment is
• Why they’re a good interviewee for your project
• Length of interview (15-30 min)
• Your contact information

If someone referred you to this person, it would be helpful to mention who! It might also be helpful to include a list of dates and times you’re available, as well as the modality of your interview (Zoom is recommended because you can record and generate a transcript) so your interviewee has a schedule to work with.

Be intentional about who you choose to interview, as who your interviewees are will influence the data you collect.

Informed Consent

When your interviewee confirms participation in future weeks, make sure to tell them the purpose and subject matter of your interview are, and remind them that it’s their right to choose not to answer a question or avoid answering it fully for ethical or safety reasons. Minors can’t give informed consent for research purposes, so if you require their participation, obtain consent from a parent or legal guardian.

You should also remind them that their answers won’t be published, as this is for a school paper, and — while anonymity should not be provided except as last resort — you can use a pseudonym in your paper if your interviewee’s safety and comfort necessitates it.

Preparing Questions

You’ll have your questions scripted before your conduct your interview. This is important, as having questions ready gives you a better idea about the kinds of information you hope to gain. Prewritten questions will help you and your interviewee stay focused as well. Make sure to write your questions so that they can’t be answered “yes” or “no” or with another simple response; questions like that are useful for getting little bits of data, but “how” and “why” questions will encourage your interviewee to give more detailed responses.

Finesurrey suggests comparing the following questions:

• Did you feel nervous on your first day of college?

This may be answered with “yes” or “no” and assumes that the interviewee felt a certain way, limiting responses. Some interviewees might elaborate, but this may not be likely.

• How did you feel on your first day of college?

This doesn’t permit a yes-or-no answer, and even one-word answers like “nervous,” leave room for you to encourage elaboration, since the interviewee was given the chance to reflect and consider how best to answer. A follow-up “why” question will most likely be received more easily if the interviewee was allowed this chance to reflect.

When interviewing, be prepared to go off-script! You’ll be designing a semi-structured interview, asking a set of core questions that are the same for all your interviewees, but varying follow-up questions to get data specific to each participant. This style encourages interviewees to express themselves more freely.

You may also need to rephrase them or integrate your questions into the conversation on the fly depending on how the interview is going. And be adaptable! You should feel free to come up with new questions during the interview itself. If you need to ask your interviewees to elaborate on anything, reference things they’ve already said! For instance, instead of “Could you please say more?” say “Could you please say more about how your first boss treated you?” The second question is more specific and shows the interviewee you’re closely listening.

🛑 Stop: Free-Write!

In your own notes, Make a list of 3 potential interviewees for your project. These should be people in your discipline who are likely to have experience with or knowledge of the issue, and people who will realistically help you out by doing an interview. Then, write 5-8 interview questions that can’t be answered yes/no — think “why” or “how” questions — and write follow-up questions for 3 of them. Try to write questions that address different parts of your research hypotheses!

Please note that these are just draft questions that you can modify before Unit 3 if needed, since your research question may change as you keep writing and as you confirm interview participants. Next week, in Module 7, you’ll share your questions in your #team channel.

Recording the Interview

When you schedule with your interviewee, ask if you can record them and what recording methods are acceptable. Zoom is recommended, since you can record the interview and generate transcripts automatically, reducing the time you’ll need to spend transcribing your interviews for coding — transcribing meaning to write down spoken language verbatim. Even though you might be recording the interview, it’s stil useful to take simple notes by hand so you can refer back to key points in the interview.

Your interviewee might want to say something “off the record,” and if they do, you should stop recording and avoid including those statements in your interview coding assignment and qualitative research project. When they’ve finished making any off-the-record statements, make sure to ask for permission to resume recording.

Post-Interview Notes

After the interview, it’s important to revisit the transcript and analyze the interviewee’s specific word choices, tone, facial expressions, body language, and pauses. Make sure to record your own thoughts soon after the conclusion of the interview. You might have noticed particular patterns with your interviewee’s responses, or potential connections to secondary research or even with the responses of other interviewees. It’s best to jot such observations down while they’re fresh in your memory.

When you’re done the interview, ask your interviewee if they have any final thoughts they’d like to share. They might have been waiting for a specific question you didn’t ask, or something might have occurred to them that they didn’t feel was appropriate to say in response to your questions. Be sure to keep recording the interview until you’re absolutely sure the interviewee has finished saying everything they want to say.

Finally, thank your interviewee for participating! Some interviewees may be curious about your assignment, so you can also let them know whether or not you’re willing to share your paper when it’s completed.

Exit Writing

🥳 Congratulations on getting through this chapter! Don’t forget to check the Calendar for the week’s assignments, including your Tue question and Fri answer posts, posting as well as any other assigned writing. Make sure to look ahead to future weeks as well to get a sense of when low- and high-stakes writing for Unit 1 is due.

Reference List for This Week’s Resources