Qualitative Research Concerns

            I feel that I might be somewhat more prepared to write this research paper because I have done one before. In my junior year of high school we had to a research paper using MLA format and it had to be at least six pages in length as well; however, we could pick whichever topic we wanted. I do not think that the open ended questions will be difficult to me because we had to do interviews for the paper I did in high school and I did very well with them. Another reason I think that I will have more of an easier time with the questions is because I was also in newspaper and yearbook in high school, and we had to do interviews almost every day. I think that it might be kind of hard for me to stay away from quantitative research because that is the most comfortable form of research for me; it’s not that I have done more of it I just think that it comes more naturally to me to do research that way. It is harder for me to think more in the aspect of understanding why we do the things we do and going in depth on that topic.

            In contrast, I think that I will do quite well on this research paper if I go ahead and get started on it and do not procrastinate. I like writing papers and doing research to support my arguments. I feel that there are endless resources that can be used, and that I need to start using them. I think the best aspects of writing qualitatively will be really grasping how to do it and, once I get into it, being able to go really far in depth in my research and reasoning why a novel was changed into a movie; I want to be able to learn how to research why we did this and learn how to interview to support what I find.

            The main challenge I except to face with this research paper is simply grasping what qualitative is and how I need to do it.  Sometimes it takes me more time to figure out what I am doing than it does actually doing the task. I want to make sure I have a complete understanding of this type of research before I start my paper so that I will not have to redo anything or lose points to a misunderstanding in the directions for this paper. Although I think that interviewing and writing questions will be easier for me, I also think that I may have trouble figuring out who to interview or where to find interviews pertaining to my topic of choice. I plan on doing the Twilight series and how it was put on the big screen because of how popular the books were. I am not sure if I should interview people around campus about the topic or just search the web. I think we should have a forum discussion on this!