Why being involved in collecting primary research is so not a waste of student time

You know the drill, every year someone will try to involve you in primary research that involves not only writing but speaking to people outside of the university. Who has time for that right? 

As a current (admittedly a little older) PhD student, I would like to share with you why it’s a really good idea for you to be involved in projects and what you can hope to gain from it - from your C.V to accessing some awesome networks. Not to mention that undertaking quality semi-structured interviews is not most definitely not for the faint-hearted (more about that later). Yet, the ability to master this skill is most certainly valued by employers as often in the workplace you have to have conversations with real people from all sectors of society.

As part of #WECAN, one area that was of particular interest was the presence of ‘Alpha’ cultures within the workplace and the implications of those cultures on women’s potential to access and participate in networks. The project team decided that the best way to gather this qualitative data would be through undertaking interviews to supplement previous survey activity. Potentially this was a valuable source of practice for students that were hoping to make their C.V stand out or learn the craft of undertaking semi-structured interviews for further primary research (and it is a craft).

Semi-structured interviewing really is a wonderful way of allowing the themes of your research to flow naturally whilst ensuring that the questions you want to ask actually get asked. So, as a project team, our questionnaire was designed to guide interviews whilst not making the interviewer stick to a more rigid structure encompassing the varied aspects of Alpha cultures that as a team we were all interested in. A total selling point is when in the room (well, via Teams in this case) with your interviewee you can instantly see the reaction to certain questions and that can allow you to dig deeper into further reasons for answers given or not. There is obviously a danger here that this may cause you to go off on a tangent yet, this can also give the novice researcher valuable insights into further research projects. 

The first hurdle to leap over after designing our sample was actually gaining access to those women that would firstly be eligible to take part in the study (another essential part of any research strategy) and encouraging them to sit down with us to let us into their work lives. Not an easy task and it has to be said that this was probably the most difficult aspect to this study as it just appeared that no matter which networks we tried to access, women were hard to come across. However, after lots of innovative attempts via social media, formal networks etc. the spreadsheets were distributed, and appointments had to be made. Already, as a student there’s lots of development evident here with new contacts and actually understanding how to construct a viable sampling frame in the real world with real people (not just seeing it written in a textbook).

From the initial fifteen women that had agreed to be involved in our research it quickly came to light that only eleven were eligible for varied reasons. At this point, this is where semi-structured interviewing feels really disappointing and a lot of effort for little pay back. However, let’s just take a step back here, just through being involved in a live research project you’ve learned skills of planning, organising (re-organising in many cases), working as part of a project team and most importantly that plans don’t always work out as you think!

At this point, we were set. All that remained was perhaps the simplest yet the easiest to get wrong – the introductory e-mail. This could really have ensured that our women merely didn’t want to be involved had the wording, grammar or context been incorrect (another skill for the skill bank). Well, the e-mails must have worked because all eleven women agreed to be interviewed via teams and this was particularly valuable to the research team as they were all women from Small and Medium Enterprises in the local region that proved to be not only a valuable source of primary data for the project but also open women that provided with us future networking research opportunities. 

What did we find out?

• That our sample considered themselves to have feminine characteristics but that masculine characteristics are the ones required for career progression.
• Networking is still a barrier for these women and not something that they enjoyed yet appreciated the relevance of the activity.

These findings are summarised below in the context of both progress and issues that our sample of women considered being of the most important in relation to Alpha Cultures within the workplace:

Whilst our research demonstrated that there had been limited progress regarding aspects of organisational culture in the workplace adapting in certain areas such as the importance of appearance, children and hierarchy, the age-old problem of dominant masculinity traits required for career progression doesn’t appear to be going anywhere soon (and therefore another possibility for student collaboration in primary research).

So, in one short blog, that’s why being involved in collecting primary research is so not a waste of student time.

A full #WECAN report on the alpha culture can be accessed via this link: https://eprints.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/id/eprint/8658/1/WomenAndOrganisationalCultureInSmesPV-TOPIC.pdf