Dance Research Methodology

Research Reflexivity Reflexivity is defined by Gratton and Jones (2004, p. 186) as: A process whereby the effect of the researcher, and their own characteristics, background, values, attitudes and so on, upon the subject matter is taken account of.Gratton and Jones...

Positivist Perspective of Validity Drawing from the discussion on the previous page regards reflexivity, and given the socially constructed nature of my research, is based on people’s subjectivities (following an interpretivist paradigm), my work cannot be judged...

Reliability Qualitative Research According to Mason (2002, p. 39), in qualitative research: Reliability involves the accuracy of your research methods and techniques . . . if your research is valid, it means that you are observing, identifying or ‘measuring’ what you...

From Data to Writing Model As I started writing the results, I was presented with various possibilities. As stated by Sandelowski (1998, p. 376), ‘qualitative researchers must choose which story, of the many stories available to them in a data set’. In the choice of...

Introduction to Coding and Themes Coding was based on a thematic analysis, which refers to the process of coding the data and grouping connected codes into themes. This process is common in qualitative research (Maykut and Morehouse, 1994; Attride-Stirling, 2001;...

Transcriptions For the textual sources (books, blogs, comments to online videos, web pages) there was no need to transcribe the content. In order that the interviews though were also in the same textual format as the above sources, the interviews needed transcription....

How to Analyse Dance The analysis of the different data sources happened in overlapping phases. The videos were the first data set I started analyzing as the study revolved around the dance as physical performance and movement. The analysis followed Adshead (1988, p....

Introduction In this section, I will describe how I have analyzed the data for this research, from breaking down the data into codes and themes to reassembling these into the presentation of results. I will explain the analysis process for the videos and for the other...

Ethics Committee The ethics for the research was submitted to and passed by the Cardiff School of Sport Ethics Committee (an interdisciplinary board), and the potential for risks in this study was considered minimal. These were identified particularly with respect to...

Rationale for Using Interview in the Dance Heritage Research The ethnochoreological approach for this research required that I gathered three different pieces of information about raqs sharqi: its form, the culture and the experience. The first two pieces of...

Rationale for Using Documents & Media In addition to online videos, I used other online and offline sources to gather data. These included books and DVDs, specialized websites and blogs, social media (especially Facebook) and open forums. These sources provided...

Rationale for Using Video Analysis I chose to analyze dance videos, in the quest to identify the key movements of Egyptian raqs sharqi, that remains roughly constant, in spite of stylistic and performance context changes. This search touches on the issue of...

Data Collection Stages Data collection was divided into three overlapping phases. Stages 1 and 2 - Video and Textual Sources The first and second phases gathered data from video and textual sources, to generate important information on the commonly held views of raqs...

Data Collection Summary Intro Before describing, in detail, the process adopted for each method of data collection and analysis, I have provided a summary below of the procedure I followed. This summary consists of a list of the main steps I took for each method, in...

Introduction In Chapter 3, I developed a holistic model of living heritage, based on a dialogical paradigm of heritage. In this chapter, I will describe the methodological process and approach for this research, following from the conceptual framework. First, I will...