TSL 3133 Action Research I

TOPIC 7

ACTION RESEARCH
Data Collection Methods

SYNOPSIS
Topic 7 has been designed to explore the data collection methods that can typically
be used during an action research project. Participants will be expected to evaluate
and consider how to employ data collection methods effectively in their action
research investigation.

LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this topic, you will be able to:

Identify the types of data collection instruments that can be used in action
research

Understand strengths and limitations of data collection instruments in action

research

Become informed about how to design and create effective data collection
instruments

FRAMEWORK OF TOPICS

DATA COLLECTION
METHODS

OBSERVATION

DOCUMENT
ANALYSIS

CHECKLIST

INTERVIEWS

Preview (30 min)

Work with a partner fill in table one

Discuss table one with another group

Discuss table one as a whole class

You may compare answers with the Data Collection Methods example

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Table 1: Data collection methods

Method

Advantage

Disadvantage

What I want to know/learn about

this method

Survey

Interview

Document
Analysis

Observation

Data Collection Methods

Method
Advantages
Interviews
-Flexibility as the researcher can
observe the participant and total
situation in which they are
responding.
-More participants are willing to
talk and react verbally than to
write responses to questions.
-Face-to-face interviews
establish rapport and motivation
for participants.
-Useful method to gather
extensive data on a small
number of complex topics.
-The researcher can control the
sequence of questions so the
respondent cannot predict the
next question.

Disadvantages
-More expensive and time consuming than
surveys.
-Only a limited number of participants may
be interviewed due to time and financial
considerations.
-Finding skilled and trained interviewers
with appropriate interpersonal skills may
be difficult.
-An interviewer effect may result from
interaction between the interviewer and
participant.
-Participants may feel that they must
answer on-the- spot.
-Flexibility afforded by unstructured
interviews may generate difficulties when
attempts are made to categorise and
evaluate responses.

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Document
Analysis

Observatio
ns

-More accurate and reliable data

than a survey.

-Participants may become less proficient

over time in their record keeping.

-Useful when the researcher is

specifically interested in precise
estimates of different kinds of
behaviour.

-Cognitive dissonance influences a

participants recollection of events and can
lead to framing of responses.

-Can record both simple and

complex behaviour.

-Highly subjective.
-Not all observations are equal or expert.

-Can begin to theorize and draw

abstractions to validate
observations.
-Researcher may use a tally
sheet to categorize reoccurring
behaviour according to criteria
sheet.
-Cost effective and easy to
implement.

-Difficult to evaluate the veracity of the

observation.
-Variables are ever present and that
means the observed behaviour may be
impossible to replicate.
-Observations can easily become
dominated by researcher bias.
-The researcher decides what phenomena
to observe and what to ignore.

Survey

-Cost effective and easy to

implement

-The researcher questions may contain

bias and can potentially lead the
participant to desired answers.

-Useful to collect data on specific

populations.
-Participants may not tell the truth over
controversial question or question that
-Tends to give respondent the
cast the participant in an unfavourable
privacy to answer truthfully.
light.
-Standardized questions make
evaluation of answers more
precise by forcing uniform
definitions on participants.
-Researcher may compare
responses to search for
emergent trends across
participants.
-Researcher may use the survey
to collect data remotely by mail,
internet or email.
-Respondents can remain
anonymous.

-Not all surveys are equal or expert.

-Very little control over the context the
survey is taken. The lack of context can
make it difficult to ascertain the reasoning
behind participant responses.
-Open-ended questions generate large
amounts of data that are time consuming
to analyse.
-Participants may answer superficially to
complete the task.

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OBSERVATION
Observation is the systematic description of events, behaviours, and artefacts in the
social setting chosen for study. Observations enable the researcher to describe
existing situations using the five senses, providing a "written photograph" of the
situation under study. Fieldwork involves active looking, improving memory, informal
interviewing, writing detailed field notes, and perhaps most importantly, patience.
Observation methods are useful to researchers in a variety of ways. They provide
researchers with ways to check for nonverbal expression of feelings, determine who
interacts with whom, grasp how participants communicate with each other, and
check for how much time is spent on various activities.
Observation is the technique of obtaining data through direct contact with a persons
or group of persons.1 Since, the main focus of qualitative research is naturalism, the
researcher has to observe person or persons in their natural state as undisturbed as
possible. The role of the researcher may be viewed as a continuum (se Figure 2.1).
On one extreme, the researcher is a passive observer and on the other extreme the
researcher is a participant observer. In between these two extremes, the researcher
may be an active observer (Potter, 1996).

Passive Observer

Active Observer

Participant

Observer

Figure 2.1 Continuum of Observation Techniques

Passive observer: The best way to be not involved and keep distance from
your subjects is to be a passive observer. As a passive observer, you simply
gather documents and observe the individual or individuals without doing

www.peoplelearn.homestead.com/Chapter2.Methods.QR.doc

TSL 3133 Action Research I

anything to disturb the situation. The researcher is unobtrusive and watches

the group from the outside; i.e. the ethic or outsiders perspective. To do so,
the researcher must gain access and be accepted by the individual or
individuals being observed. For example, in collecting e-mails or essays
written by subjects or learning journals of students, the researcher examines
them without being involved. Similarly, when a researcher interested in
studying children interacting in school canteens or the playground, merely
observes them without being involved. A certain amount of distance is
maintained between the researcher and the person or persons being
observed.

Participant Observation: As the name participant suggests, the researcher

participates in the activities of the persons being observed rather than being
an observer. The researcher has two role as observer and as participant.
The researcher participates as much as possible in the daily life of the
subjects while also carefully observing everything he or she can about it.
Through this, the researcher is seeking to gain what is called an emic
perspective or the natives point of view or the insiders perspective. The
researcher records detailed field notes, conduct interview based on openended questions and gather whatever site documents might be available in
the setting as data. Participation can take many forms. For example, the
researcher could show a film or video to stimulate discussion or question
subjects and observe how they would react to the stimulus. The researcher
takes an active position with the purpose of stimulating subjects to think about
things they might never have thought about before. However, as pointed out
by Hammersley and Atkinson (1983), there is the danger of the researcher
going native which means being too involved or having too close a rapport
with the person or persons being observed to the extent that you loose
objectivity.

Participant observation

Observer participates actively, for an extended period of time

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May require observer to live or work in that area

Assumes that observer will become accepted member of the group or

community

Almost any setting in which people have complex interactions with each other, with
objects, or with their physical environment can be usefully examined through
participant observation. Since doing participant observation means being embedded
in the action and context of a social setting (going native), we consider three key
elements of a participant observation study:

1. Getting into the location of whatever aspect of the human experience you wish to
study. This means going to where the action ispeoples communities, homes,
workplaces, recreational sites, places of commercial interaction, sacred sites, and
the like. Participant observation is almost always conducted in situ.

2. Building rapport with the participants. The point of participant observation is that
you wish to observe and learn about the things people do in the normal course of
their lives. That means they have to accept you, to some extent, as someone they
can be themselves in front of. While you dont necessarily have to be viewed as a
complete insider, a successful participant observer has to inspire enough trust and
acceptance to enable her research participants to act much as they would if the
researcher were not present.

Active Observer: Between being a passive observer and an active participant, the
researcher could take a middle position of being an active observer. Here,
participation is allowed but limited. The researcher may intrude into the lives of
subjects such as entering their homes or their communities but remains passive
once inside the environment so as not to influence the natural occurring behaviours
and conversations. For example, a researcher interested in TV viewing habits may
enter a household, eat with the family, play with the children and take part in family
activities. Family members are told not to change their routines in order to
accommodate the observer. However, the researcher tries as far as possible to be

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passive, saying as little as possible so as not to influence the behaviours and

conversations of subjects.

Observer
An observer is under the bed. A participant observer is in it. John Whiting

Observer is an eavesdropper

Someone who attempts to observe people without interacting with them

With or without their knowledge that they are being observed2

Direct observation is primarily a quantitative technique in which the observer is

explicitly counting the frequency and/or intensity of specific behaviors or events or
mapping the social composition and action of a particular scene. While most direct
observation data collection is conducted by actual observers, many direct
observation studies do not technically require a human data collector.
The data captured in direct observation are, by definition, those that can be observed
and do not inherently require any interaction (talk or discussion) between the
observer and those being studied. Direct observation is about observable behavior
and is typically associated with research objectives that require some sort of ordinal
data or purely factual description: how often, how many, how intensely, who was
there, and the like. As such, direct observation is normally a fairly structured form of
data collection.

Participants
Participants are a group that has been identified and isolated from the general
population for research study. Since the focus in action research is usually on the
teachers classroom, participants usually involve the teachers students in a
classroom where the improvement and action research intervention will make the
biggest difference to how teachers teach and how students learn.

http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/48454_ch_3.pdf SAGE chapter 3 December

2012.

TSL 3133 Action Research I

DOCUMENT ANALYSIS3
If the focus of your study is the examination of documents, than you should have
access to such material which may include letters, memos, notes, diaries,
photographs, audiotapes, videotapes, films, articles, books, manuscripts, e-mails,
online discussions and so forth. In general documents are any preserved recording
of a persons thoughts, actions or creations (Potter, 1996).

The

examination

of

documents is especially important to historians who investigate patterns and trends

from the past. Documents may be examined to investigate patterns and trends of the
past as is commonly done by historians. If no humans remain alive to provide
primary evidence, then documents are the in only source of data (Potter, 1996).
Documents are also examined by researchers who are investigating subjects who
are available. The examination of documents may also provide confirmatory
evidence of the information obtained from interviews and observations.

Document for analysis

student achievement data diagnostic assessment
samples of student work attendance records
anecdotal records files
behavior records literature review
web research journal
lesson plans portfolio
activity reports pre-test and post-test
self-evaluation standardized test scores
______________________ ______________________
______________________ ______________________
______________________ ______________________

www.peoplelearn.homestead.com/Chapter2.Methods.QR.doc downloaded from the world wide web December

2012.

TSL 3133 Action Research I

CHECKLIST
The checklist technique is commonly used in qualitative research to denote the
frequency of a particular behavior that is related to the research question. Checklists
are a popular data collection technique because it can be applied in a wide variety of
research situation. In other words, we encourage participants to investigate and
consult with a supervisor about how to create their own checklist as a research
collection instrument to investigate action research.

Table 1: Checklist example

If my action research issue is gender question and answering in the English
classroom, I can create a checklist to denote where and who answers the majority
of questions in the classroom: boys or girls. This information may also shed light on
where the teacher (me) is directing his or her questions towards most often (boys or
girls). Second, the checklist as a data collection instrument can also identify the type
of question asked OPEN ended (requiring a detailed response) or CLOSED (yes or
no answer) to boys or girls in the classroom.
Lets practice4

Read over Table 2 carefully

Next, practice using this checklist in our class (right now)

Use the checklist below to observe and see where questions are asked in our
TSL 3113 class.

Make sure you keep notes on what you have observed as that will be used for
discussion at the end of class

TABLE 1: Teacher questioning checklist

Date:

Start TIME:

Classroom: TSL 3113

Class duration:

Number of participants:
Number of girls:
Number of boys:
4

Instructor can hand this out at the start of lecture or tutorial and ask the students to fill it out as we go through
class to monitor where questions are asked. Then at the end of the lecture, discuss findings of students checklist
and identify where questions are asked in class and what this means.

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Observers Name:
Objective: This checklist is designed to collect information on:
1. Where the teacher directed his/her questions in class
2. Responses according to gender
3. Locate the type of question (Open or Closed) that was asked according to
gender.
In class, the peer observer will indicate in writing using the criteria below to denote
the appropriate student responses as you observe the English lesson. For example
F/O means girl open ended question and B/C = boy closed question.
Criteria

B/G; Boy/Girl

Open Question (O)

Closed question (C)

CLASSROOM Questioning
Checklist
My anecdotal notes (what you see):

Observer reflection (should have insight and reflection)

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Running Records5
The most powerful teaching in classrooms takes place when teachers use the
information gained from observations and assessments of childrens literacy
development to plan their teaching. However teachers recognise that observations
can sometimes be subjective and influenced by what they already know or believe
about the students and their literacy development. Therefore it is important to add
data from more formal assessments to their observations.

Tests of alphabet knowledge, phonics, phonemic awareness, and sight words form
part of reading assessment but they dont provide the whole picture of how a student
approaches the reading process. Gathering information from a Running Record,
which gives a reliable and valid assessment of text reading, and adding this
information to other assessments enables a teacher to gain a richer and more
comprehensive assessment of a students reading ability.

How to take a Running Record

1. Select a text at the students appropriate reading level and one that has been
previously introduced and read by the student.
2. Invite the student to read the text.
3. As the student reads, use the conventions to note the students reading
behaviours.
4. Score and analyse the Running Record.
5. Use this information to plan for future teaching.

http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/northernadelaide/files/links/DECD_Running_Records_1_v8.pdf

TSL 3133 Action Research I

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INTERVIEWS

Structured interviews
Interviewing is a technique of gathering data from humans by asking them questions
and getting them to react verbally. There are many different ways of conducting
interviews (see Figure 2.2). Structured interviews use an interview schedule that is
similar to the survey questionnaire. You could phrase the question in such a way that
so that you have a limited range of responses. For example, Do you think the image
of teachers in society has gone down? Strongly agree, agree, somewhat agree,
agree and strongly agree. Structured interviews are widely used in surveying
opinions, beliefs and perceptions of people. Individual interviews are expensive and
you should consider whether the same amount of data can be more efficiently
collected using written questionnaires.

Semi-structured interviews
Semi-structured interviews and unstructured interviews are widely used in qualitative
research. Semi-structured interviews consist of a list of open-ended questions based
on the topic areas the researcher intends to study. The open-ended nature of the
questions provides opportunities for both the interviewer and interviewee to discuss
certain topics in more detail. If the interviewee has difficulty answering a question or
hesitates, the interviewer will probe. Three types of probes commonly used by the
interviewer are:
a) Detail-oriented probe
When did it happen to you?
Who was with you?
b) Elaboration probe
Tell me more about the incident.
Can you give an example.
c) Clarification probe
Im not sure I understand what you mean by hanging out. Can you
explain?
You said that your principal is extremely autocratic.

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Unstructured interviews
Unstructured interviews aim to obtain in depth interviews of persons interviewed.
Only a limited number of topics are discussed, sometimes as few as one or two
topics. Although only a few topics are discussed, they are covered in great detail.
The interview may begin with a question such as Id like to hear your views of
school discipline. Subsequent questions would follow from the interviewees
responses. Unstructured interviews are used to find out about a specific topic but
has no structure or preconceived plan or expectation as to how the interview will
proceed.

Face-to-face or personal interviews are labour intensive but can be the best way of
collecting high quality data, especially when the subject matter is very sensitive, if
the questions are very complex or if the interview is likely to be lengthy (Mathers,
Fox and Hunn, 2002).

References
Kawulich, Barbara. SAGE publication: Volume 6, No. 2, Art. 43 May 2005
Participant Observation as a Data Collection Method
http://www.qualitativeresearch.net/index.php/fqs/article/view/466/996
Qualitative Data Collection Techniques Chapter 2:
www.peoplelearn.homestead.com/Chapter2.Methods.QR.doc downloaded from the
world wide web December 2012.

Southern Australia Department of Education, Adelaide. Running records

downloaded from the world wide web, December 2012.
http://www.decd.sa.gov.au/northernadelaide/files/links/DECD_Running_Records_1_
v8.pdf.