It took me a tutorial with Carys to understand that what we are assessing in the ARP Unit is the efficacy of our intervention, instead of the intervention itself. Once I understood this, I played around with a few different research methods. Here are some thoughts I had at different stages:
- Collaborative/creative ethnography: As a creative writer who has dabbled in autoethnography in her PhD, I wondered if this method would be interesting and beneficial. I brushed up a little on autoethnography with some readings by Carolyn Ellis and her collaborators (2000, 2004, 2007, 2011). What pulls me towards this research method is the centring of the involved participants’ voices as opposed to observing a context as an outsider in the ethnography research method and thus indulging in exoticisation, as discussed by Saunders et al:
‘From the 1700s to the early 1900s, ethnography was developed to study cultures in societies that had been brought under the rule of a colonial power, to facilitate imperialist control and administration.’ (2023, p 197)
Conquergood (1991), Riedmann (1993) and Ellis (2007) also discuss the colonialist attitudes in entering a culture and writing about it as an outsider, often motivated by monetary and/or professional gain (discussed in Ellis et al 2011). As the focus of my intervention has been making my students feel more in control of their learning journeys, this research method also seemed fitting. Moreover, as the intervention was with my students studying creative magazine writing, it also made sense to have them participate in some creative writing as a research method. I was new to collaborative/creative autoethnography, and did some research for resources such as Universal Methods of Design by Hanington and Martin (2012), Collaborative Autoethnography by Chang et al (2013), ‘Collaborative Autoethnography and Duoethnography’ by Salmons (2023), and an interesting literary and arts online magazine called The AutoEthnographer. However, during this process, I discussed this method further with my tutor and tutorial group and realised that A. this method may not fit in the timeframe of the ARP unit, and B. it would make the students focus more on their learning journeys – which is what the intervention is – as opposed to examining the efficacy of the intervention. I do not regret the research I’ve conducted so far on this method though as it is something I may include in the intervention in coming years. - Interviews: This is a research method I have used previously in my PhD research and felt comfortable with. Semi-structured interviews with my students would generate detailed qualitative data that would be useful for assessing the efficacy of my intervention. I prefer semi-structured over structured interviews because they enable me to ask questions, respond to my interviewees’ replies and interpret the data (Saunders et al 2023, p 441). Doing 1-on-1 interviews would be time-consuming, however, so I kept interviews with the previous cohort who had participated in the intervention last year as a back-up method in case I ran into some trouble in engaging my current cohort in the research. An issue that one of my peers Paul Bench raised in a group tutorial was around selection bias – that the students from the prior cohort who may be more willing to take some time out for the interview may be students who like me and/or enjoyed the unit I taught. The only way I could foresee alleviating this was contacting all the students from last year’s cohort and not favouring any student. Fortunately, I had enough of a response from this current cohort and didn’t have to use this as a back-up.
- Focus group: This method seemed like the best combination of everything I was seeking. It was new to me and thus an exciting challenge, following the advice given in the ARP Unit briefing (‘Experiment with different methods — ideally that are new to you‘). It would generate qualitative data with my students and platform their voices – thus being in the spirit of the research [especially as Linda T Smith (2021) states that ‘methods are not neutral’]. It would be semi-structured in nature, thus allowing me to respond to my students’ responses and follow their trains of thought. And it would be more suitable for the scope of the project and the time we had. I did some reading on this finalised research method, which I discuss in further detail in the blog post about focus group reflections.
References
Chang, H et al (2013) Collaborative Autoethnography. Available at: https://www.routledge.com/Collaborative-Autoethnography/Chang-Ngunjiri-Hernandez/p/book/9781598745566 (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Conquergood, D (1991). ‘Rethinking Ethnography: Towards a Critical Cultural Politics’, Communication Monographs, 58(2), pp 179-194. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/03637759109376222 (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Ellis, C (2004) The Ethnographic I: A Methodological Novel About Autoethnography. California: Altamira Press.
— (2007) ‘Telling Secrets, Revealing Lives: Relational Ethics in Research with Intimate Others’, Qualitative Inquiry, 13(1), pp 3-29. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/1077800406294947 (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Ellis, C and Bochner, A P (2000) ‘Autoethnography, Personal Narrative, Reflexivity’, Handbook of Qualitative Research. Edited by N K Denzin and Y S Lincoln. California: Sage, pp 733-768.
Ellis, C et al (2011) ‘Autoethnography: An Overview’, Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung/ Forum: Qualitative Social Research, 12(1). Available at: https://doi.org/10.17169/fqs-12.1.1589 (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Hanington, B and Martin, B (2012) Universal Methods of Design: 100 Ways to Research Complex Problems, Develop Innovative Ideas, and Design Effective Solutions. Quarto Publishing Group USA. ProQuest Ebook Central. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ual/detail.action?docID=3399583 (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Riedmann (1993) Science That Colonizes: A Critique of Fertility Studies in Africa. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
Salmons, J (2023) ‘Collaborative Autoethnography and Duoethnography’, Sage Research Methods Community. Available at: https://researchmethodscommunity.sagepub.com/blog/collaborative-autoethnography (Accessed 6 January 2026).
Saunders, M N K et al (2023) Research Methods for Business Students, ninth edition. United Kingdom: Pearson. Available at: https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/UAL/detail.action?docID=7219451 (Accessed 2 January 2026).
Smith, L T (2021) ‘Decolonial Research Methods: Resisting Coloniality in Academic Knowledge Production: Webinar 2’, National Centre for Research Methods. [Online video]. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFQ09rPQFyA (Accessed 7 January 2026).
The AutoEthnographer (2021) Available at: https://theautoethnographer.com/artistic-autoethnography-artifacts/ (Accessed 7 January 2026).