"A reflective log responding to Dornyei’s Book
--Research Methods in Applied Linguistics--
As my research is going to deal with qualitative data collection methods and analysis, this book is a good reading for my research methodology. I think this book should be in the study list for postgrad students in Linguistics. It’s easy to read and the chapters are well-proportioned between quantitative and qualitative approaches. I grabbed the book from the new arrival shelves today and flipped through the pages and located on this page of qualitative data collection page 159: Research Journals.
If you have followed my blog for quite a while, you would know that I am into my research blog and try to keep record of my study. Unfortunately, I am not an organized person sometimes I just want to write something else that comes to my mind and may ‘lose my track’ because of other daily attractions and event.
Here we go what I pick up from the lines:
Research journals are diaries kept by the researchers themselves during he course of a research project rather than by the participants of a study concerning the topic of the investigation. It is a common recommendation in social research that the researcher should keep a journal. With the assumption that in qualitative research almost anything can be perceived as potential data, and there is no reason why the researcher’s field notes, real-time comments, memos, and annotations would be exceptions. Personal agency is an important part of qualitative enquiries and the ‘meta’ data generated by the researcher offer valuable insights to the projects.
How to keep a research journal:
Research students should do the record in their logbooks and journal the following:
> What you do, and where, how, when, and why you do it
> What you read
> What data you collect and how you process it.
> Any outcomes of the data analysis.
> What you think or feel about what is happening, and any ideas that may be relevent for your research
> Anything else that is influencing you.
Six Journal Writing Strategies:
1. Write regularly
2. Persist through the initial difficult period that occurs to many new writers
3. Consider the journal private so that you don't have to censor yourself or worry about style and punctuation
4. Introduce a regular structure and format in your entries
5. Include relevant illustrative materials such as photos, notes, documents, lesson plans, student works, etc.
6. From time to time check whether the balance and amount of the different types of notes is right.
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I hope these excerpts from Dornyei's book will be helpful for fellow teachers and students who want to start qualitative research.
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