Category: Reflection #4

As I am approaching the end of the semester, I am beginning to wrap up and perform the final steps of my research project. I have just sent out the survey I made on community organizations over a week ago to exactly 40 professors at SIUE who teach science or ecology courses. Currently, I have only 10 responses in total, yet I believe that these results alone are going to set a precedent for any other professors who decide to participate. Many of the answers that I have received on my survey have been relatively similar, with only 1 or 2 outliers. It appears that the majority of the participants are in agreement on what roles community organizations could play on campus, whether that is giving lectures to students or advertising volunteer opportunities. Unfortunately, these participants do not speak for the majority of SIUE professors, so until I get more responses, I will simply analyze the current ones and look for trends. 

Most of the questions I posed within the survey allowed the participants to share their experience with and feelings about community organizations. For example, when asked what classes they currently teach or plan on teaching at SIUE that benefit from involvement with community organizations, many of the participants simply said “None”. However, courses in Geography and Anthropology were mentioned as possibilities. While these responses were not extremely significant on their own, it was what their responders went on to say which caught my attention. The same participants who offered solutions for the first question later mentioned how they had students doing community service work for community organizations in the past. The majority of the responders, regardless of any experience with community organizations or lack thereof, had a positive outlook on these groups and the impact they can have on the lives of students. But when the question of “How is this beneficial to Heartlands?” comes up, there are two specific questions that I like to look at. First off, how would the professors utilize these community organizations in class? Most of the participants said either through lectures or networking with students. Beyond that, there were several topics that professors had brought up when asked what courses could benefit from a community organization lead, such as climate change, forever chemicals, and urban farming. Even though my number of responses is rather low, I am able to notice patterns in responses, which could change or remain constant as more participants decide to join. 

The second half of the semester has just begun, and the time to collect data is slowly decreasing. In this next week, I will make adding more participants my priority by resending the survey to the professors who I have not received a response from. The biggest issue with the trends I am currently noticing is that I have no idea whether or not they will hold up as I get more responses. I want to be able to give Heartlands a reliable product that will allow them to partner with students and professors at SIUE in order to push their projects forward. Right now, I simply need to ensure that I get the most answers possible. Then, and only then, can I begin decoding the data. 

When talking about common survey methods, the two that first come to mind with researchers would be interviews and focus groups. However, these research approaches can often fail in reaching their primary goals. When most people think about interviews, the idea of jobs interviews could be the first thought that appears in their head. Keeping this mindset throughout a research interview would most likely lead to the interviewee being more nervous and less willing to tell the complete truth, since their main focus will be finding the “right” answer, instead of finding their answer. One possible way this could be reworded in order to put the participants more at ease would be to introduce them as questionnaires instead of interviews. 

Beyond that, the researchers themselves could also influence the responses from the participants. The way the questions are phrased often has an impact on the answers given. For example, a researcher could ask a question such as “Do you believe the new law that was passed is just?”, or they could ask it as “How do you feel about the new law that was passed?”. The first way may persuade a participant to say yes, while the second way excludes any bias. Many researchers may not realize it, but the way they ask a question can cause their responses to be less accurate.  

So, after a researcher conducts an interview and gets the responses, their study is complete, right? Not quite yet. Perhaps the most important part of conducting interviews is interpreting their results afterwards. Since interviews often provide more qualitative data than quantitative data, grouping similar responses is difficult, but crucial to seeing how many people answered a question a certain way. The struggle is finding a balance between putting similar responses in the same category, while not forcing a complex answer into a certain box. Failure at either one of these could cause many viewpoints to be ignored in a given study. Despite all the difficulties that come with interviews and focus groups, when done right, they can offer a lot of insight into the experiences and struggles of people from any given commnity.