Lay out the key features of the research interest that calls out your name. Given that, how would a canonical sociologist (a traditional, quantitative-minded social scientist) design or “set up” this research question? What kind of data would be sampled or gathered? How would the hypotheses be tested? What kind of steps would be taken to guard against bias, and to make sure that the data were generalizable?
I would like to study the learning and information-seeking behaviour of individuals who are trying to learn a musical instrument, using guitar as an example. “How do guitar students learn how to play the guitar by using Information Communication Technologies (ICTs)?”
In order to achieve a ‘random’ sample, controls for variables need to be considered by collecting a wide range of data about age (young prodigies to mature hobbyists), literacy or education level (ability to read or follow instructions, experience with music education), physical or mental capacity (small hands, visually impaired, etc.), physical location (city, suburb, small town), comfort level with ICTs (information addict, technology luddite), motivation for learning (love of a musical genre, pop icons, access to instrument and information, etc.), amount of time they have devoted to learning (regularity of individual and group lessons, time devoted to practicing, other opportunities to play with others) and the level of achievement (by standards defined by music schools and conservatories). Such a variety of perspective is desgigned to ensure that the data collected are not unreliable due to inadvertent bias in the selection of subjects.
In addition to data about who the subject is, one would also interested in how they use ICTs as part of their learning initiative. The frequency of use (hourly, daily, every other day, weekly) of particular ICTs (paid websites, online videos, free sheet music, instructional programs, how do you even define ICTs??) and for what learning objective (to learn a song, a technique, mechanics of the instrument, historical and cultural context, to just ‘browse’).
These factors represent different aspects of the subject in question, and provide multiple ways of measuring higher level data, such as their personal commitment to learning music. The survey would be designed to collect interval data, from which a hypothesis or generalization would be developed to the effect of, “This is how ICTs are being used to facilitate music education in this particular group.”, based on a statistically significant type of learning or information-seeking behaviour that is found in one or more identified groups. There really isn’t anything to test, as I don’t start off with a hypothesis.
Why is that way of studying your particular question not adequate for the question you want to ask?
Good question. There’s a lot of historical-cultural factors that are not accounted for. A literature and case study review of music education practices in theory and practice is lacking in the approach above. In particular, education as a practice is dynamic and constantly changing. If my interest is in the emerging phenomena related to music, learning, and technology, the quantitative approach will be highly contingent and thus highly unreliable, as valid as the data gathered may be. (I have a feeling this is where the exercise is going to turn the attention to Qualitative approaches…)
