When I started to read about research methods, I got overwhelmed by the sheer volume of resources that are available to us on the subject. To organise the resources, I created a Padlet https://artslondon.padlet.org/kidzi1/research-methods-gathering-information-and-resources-needed–86jbde4hbrcs69hq, and I put books, articles and other resources that I found useful there.
This helped me to see where I could start with my research. I found The M&E Universe resources, that link to was shared with us in the second workshop, very useful as a starting point. The short, 2-3 pages long description of each method allowed me to judge what methods would be most useful for what I wanted to do.
Once I knew that I would like to work with questionnaires and interviews (or small focus group), I had reached for more in-depth books.
The following books provided me with lots of guidance:
Bell, J. and Waters, S. (2018) Doing your research project: a guide for first-time researchers. London: McGraw-Hill Education.
I like the way the book is edited, with very clear layout of each chapter. I looked closer at and used information from two chapters, on interviews and surveys (still very useful for learning about questionnaires). In the mentioned Padlet I included the document with the most important excerpts from each chapter. I learnt about different kinds of interviews (structured, semi-structured for example), issues surrounding recording of the interview and ‘our old enemy’ – bias.
Matthews, B. and Ross, L. (2010) Research methods: a practical guide for the social sciences. Harlow: Longman, Pearson Education.
This is another very well designed and user-friendly book that helped me to work on designing a focus group and will inform the data analysis at later stage of my project. I talk more about this reading in my blog about focus group preparations.