Tanya Martin's Applied Project
 
Search this site

III. Design

Overall Design

My study used a mixed-methods approach, incorporating both qualitative and quantitative data.

Participants

Four SLMS graduate students submitted field experiences, responded to the KTS-II, and addressed follow-up questions.

Data Collection

    Preparation and Field Testing

    1. I drafted an invitation letter and a set of instructions for completing the KTS-II inventory.
    2. I conducted a field test on a classmate who was representative of the participants I would recruit for my study.
    3. I revised my instruments and materials based on feedback from my field test participant.

    Live Data Collection and Initial Organization

    1. I sent out the revised invitation letter to my Cohort 7 classmates who weren't involved in the field testing and waited for responses.
    2. As responses arrived, I replied to my volunteers with further instructions for submitting field experiences, completing the Keirsey questionnaire, and following up.
    3. I set up a Google Form for follow-up questions so that participants' responses would automatically be converted to a spreadsheet.
    4. I set up a spreadsheet to keep up with the Keirsey participant passwords I assigned to participants.
    5. I kept a record of who had completed which parts of their participation; four participants provided data.
    6. To help maintain participants' anonymity and my own objectivity, I replaced participants' names with the codes A, B, C, and D.
    7. I saved participants' field experiences and KTS-II results as Google Docs so I could easily access them.

Data Sources

    • Qualitative data from participants’ field experience write-ups
    • Qualitative data from participants' responses to the Keirsey Temperament Sorter II (KTS-II) from their host media specialists' perspectives
    • Quantitative data generated from word frequency analysis of the field experiences and personality test results
    • Qualitative and quantitative data from a brief follow-up survey

Analysis

    1. I highlighted data from the field experiences, KTS-II results, and follow-up questions that seemed relevant to my research question.
    2. I created a unique, easy-to-remember code/tag for each major idea I found in my data.
    3. I created a main data spreadsheet sortable by pseudonym, source of data, or code/tag.
    4. I created Wordle images for all 4 participants' field experiences and KTS-II results summaries, and I compiled these 8 images into a Google Doc for easy viewing and visual comparison.
    5. I used Wordle's word-counting feature to create spreadsheets of the word frequencies in each of the 8 main pieces of data, the four field experiences and the four sets of KTS-II results.
    6. I examined the spreadsheets for patterns in the data, especially related to interpersonal skills, personality traits, interactions with the learning community, etc.
    7. I created a summary table of the coded data from the field experiences and the KTS-II results.
    8. Using the word frequency spreadsheets, I created a list of "Top 9 Activities" for each host media specialist based on the most frequently used verbs in the field experiences.
    9. I looked for correlations between the summary tables and the Top 9 activities for each field experience.
    10. I examined the field experience Wordle images for visual evidence of which ideas were most prominently displayed in the data.
    11. Based on the key ideas in my data, I created a chart addressing the three main issues in my research question: personality, interpersonal skills, and perceived effectiveness.
    12. I condensed my discussion into list of recommended interpersonal traits for media specialists.