Reflection #3: Data Collection

To answer my research question of how young adults want to be engaged in nature conservation, I conducted interviews. By using interviews to collect data, I feel that I would be able to understand their responses without having to guess. Before I started my interviews, I had to come up with a list of questions to ask them. I wasn’t too sure what questions I could ask in order to indirectly get an answer to my problem. I felt that I needed to circle around the issue and let them come to the conclusion on their own as this would bring out their perspective on this issue. However, after taking some time to consider what would be the best course of action, I realized it would be much easier, and effective, if I just straight out asked them the question. This led me to ask them questions such as “what would you do to get more people our age involved in conservation?” By asking them directly how they want to be engaged, I was able to get a straight forward answer to what the problem was in people our age getting involved in nature conservation.

Now, when I was thinking of who I can interview, I had a couple of ideas. I thought about interviewing friends and family, CODES students, random students attending SIUE, as well as some other smaller ideas. The one I really wanted to go with was interviewing random students attending SIUE. I wanted to go around with my voice recording app on my phone and go up to random people in the MUC, who seemed to not be busy, and ask them if they were open to answering a few short questions about nature conservation. If they said yes, I would give them the paper copy of the consent statement and interview them with a couple of the hard hitting questions I came up with, and the interview would be conducted right where they were so it could be as convenient as possible. However, I have to admit that it got very stressful around this time with my other classes and personal problems. So, I wasn’t able to do my interviews in this way since I didn’t have enough time. However, I chose to pivot towards my friends and CODES students who attend SIUE since it was one of my original ideas that included my target audience.

Even though I had to pivot from my ideal plan, it still turned out to be very insightful to my research. I interviewed 10 students and they all gave me corresponding answers that helped me to understand how I should move forward with my plan. Based on the data I collected, I decided to come up with an informational brochure that will be placed in as many places as I am allowed to put it. This brochure will contain information about our partner HeartLands Conservancy and opportunities and events they host, other information about volunteer opportunities and campus club events, as well as general information about what nature conservation is and why it is important.