{"id":5276,"date":"2018-10-11T12:48:52","date_gmt":"2018-10-11T16:48:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/?p=5276"},"modified":"2018-10-11T12:48:52","modified_gmt":"2018-10-11T16:48:52","slug":"limitations-in-research-that-has-been-conducted-by-someone-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/2018\/10\/11\/limitations-in-research-that-has-been-conducted-by-someone-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Limitations in Research that has been Conducted by Someone Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

My research group has decided to study community service at the Croft School in Chile. \u00a0What we found most interesting after reading through all the interviews collected from students, teachers and alumni at the Croft School was that there seemed to be a discrepancy between what the school and teachers thought of community service and what community service was really being done. \u00a0Community Service is one of the four pillars of the Croft School. In order to be considered a pillar of the school, you would think the school would want their students heavily involved in service, however that is not what the data indicated. Instead, students talked about donating money or food once or twice a year, which would be sent by the school to less-fortunate schools. \u00a0Some students recalled helping build homes once a year. When teachers were asked about the community service that their students undertake, they generally seemed to think their students were very committed to service and it was a great thing. To me, if service is so emphasized by the school, I would have assumed students were completing some sort of service at least once a week. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

(<\/span>http:\/\/www.ecsu.edu.et\/content\/community-service-directorate<\/span><\/a>)<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As we begin to comb through our data, I cannot help but be frustrated that we are limited to the data that other people have gathered about the school. \u00a0This is the first time that I have done research and have been limited by the data that is available to me. Furthermore, this is the first time that I have developed a research question after reading through a set of data. \u00a0In the past I have formulated a research question and then went and found data that supported or refuted my claim. For this project I have already found myself wishing I knew more about certain aspects of the school, or could ask different questions to inform my research project further. \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Something about not being directly involved in the interviews and data-collection of the research project you are conducting seems weird. \u00a0It is hard to imagine or fully-understand who the people are that you are reading about, without meeting them face-to-face. I did not attend an elite private school, so I can only apply what I know about elite schooling from my time at Colby. \u00a0I also know very little, if anything about Chilean schooling, or even Chilean culture. This is something that is especially intimidating when working with a group of students who have some experience researching elite schools and or the schooling system \u00a0of Chile. <\/span><\/p>\n

When our group met last Monday night we discussed the need for caution when it comes to doing research and applying our western perspective when talking about another culture. \u00a0We noted that we must be careful in applying our ideals and notions of westernized schooling to the Chilean schools. I asked if we were judging the Croft School\u2019s community service based on our western idea of what constitutes good or meaningful community service. \u00a0This concern caused us to shift our focus of research and make sure that we were measuring the school\u2019s service based on the impact it had on the greater Chilean community. This brings me back to my original frustration. How can we measure the impact the student\u2019s service made on their community without data to support this. \u00a0After all, we cannot call up the students and alumni and ask them this question. I am curious to see what other limitations our research runs into given that we are confined to the data that is provided to us. <\/span><\/p>\n\n

\n <\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My research group has decided to study community service at the Croft School in Chile. \u00a0What we found most interesting after reading through all the interviews collected from students, teachers and alumni at the Croft School was that there seemed to be a discrepancy between what the school and teachers thought of community service and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7947,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7947"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5276"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5279,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5276\/revisions\/5279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/web.colby.edu\/global-elites\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}