Sources of Data

About the lecture

In this lecture, we think about different sources of data when working with people, focusing in particular on: (i) recognising interviews and focus groups as qualitative research methods; (ii) understanding interviews to often be one-to-one, enabling a very focused conversation to gather large amounts of in-depth information and to follow up on enquiries within each interview; (iii) the semi-structured interview being the typical interview format, whereby researchers have a general questioning structure which is flexible to respond to participants; (iv) some key ethical conduct points to adhere to when recruiting for and setting up an interview, including providing an information sheet to the participant(s) ahead of the interview; (v) some factors to consider when deciding on the setting for the interview, including geographical location and surroundings; (vi) a focus group, which involves more participants than researchers; (vii) the idea of a focus group being that participants talk to each other in response to researcher prompts, rather than answering researcher questions directly; (viii) a key benefit of a focus group over an interview being the collection of collective views, rather than those only from one individual at a time.

About the lecturer

Dr Rosie Nelson is a lecturer in gender in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Dr Nelson’s research interests are in LGBTQ+ sexualities, trans and non-binary identities. Some of Dr Nelson’s recent publications include ‘What do bisexuals look like? I don’t know!’ (2020) and ‘Questioning identities/shifting identities’ (2020).