My ethics approval form went through some versions before arriving at the approved version. It started with the draft:
Which I then worked on myself to arrive at the first version, which received some feedback.
20th Oct 2023 tutorial with Lindsey about Ethics:
Pre-Workshop Questionnaire with a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being “Strongly Disagree” and 5 being “Strongly Agree”:
- I am knowledgeable about diversity, equity, and inclusion principles.
- I actively reflect on my own social identity and positionality.
- I understand what intersectionality means. (What does intersectionality mean to you?)
- I am aware of my own privileges and disadvantages in society.
- I am comfortable discussing my cultural background with others.
Rewording the research question:
“How effective is an arts-based workshop at fostering intercultural exchange and critical reflection on intersectionality and positionality among university art students?”
“How can I foster intercultural exchange and critical reflection on intersectionality and positionality among university art students?”
Consideration about consent and how students participate in the research.
Whether if you get the honest responds from students. How would the student evaluate their understand of their positionality and how can they assess that. A better way of putting the questionnaire is ask students: What is Positionality to you with a big box. Therefore, the researcher will assess it when evaluating the data.
Research Question 5 is perfect to keep.
Lindsey suggested consider different methods of the questionnaire – try it out.
As regarding to permission – it would be good for students opt- to attend the workshop, but not participate in the questioner as this would be a Gold standard. They can keep the questionnaire as sources of reference as they have the Permission to withdraw.
Feedback from Lindsay:
A couple of quick questions:
How will you document the workshop? Will you record student outputs in some way? Or is the plan to limit data collection to the questionnaires?
How will you get students to complete the pre- and post- questionnaires. Is there another, more reliable, way of getting the data you seek? For example, can some of the information in the post-survey be gathered from the activities?
One issue with having the pre- and post-questionnaires anonymous is that any comparison will have limited validity because the two samples may not have much overlap. A more valid way of evaluating an activity or workshop is to build iterative self and peer assessment into the workshop activities so that the outputs reveal the learning that is taking place. This kind of method is more aligned with action research, whereas pre- and post- testing is more aligned with quantitative and traditional research.
HOWEVER… your questions are really good (some are bit leading, as in, it’s obvious what the right answer is!) and it would be really interesting to see what comes from asking them. I like the mix of scored and open ended questions. Neither the pre- nor the post- questionnaires are easy or quick to answer. That’s not a bad thing provided they have time and support to think about their answers and complete their forms. Getting them to do them in small groups, in-session, with a small gift (chocolate?) for finishing, would get you a much better response rate, and fit well with the theme of intercultural exchange. It might require some rewording of the questions to accommodate a group response.
The session design is strong (was this your IP intervention? I can’t remember if you said!)
This is an exciting project Michelle, and you’ve got plenty of detail here. Consider it ethically signed off!
Responses to the feedback:
The workshop will be documented on an Action Research Padlet. Student will post activities on the Padlet and share their work. Base on the feedback I decided to embedded the Pre-Workshop Questionnaire into the workshop session as part of activities asking students to post answers on the Action Research Padlet. I have consider to include iterative self and peer assessment during the workshop activities. The post questionnaire was amended slightly to ensure a good responds from the students. This was indeed inspired from my IP intervention!
And the final version of the Ethical Enquiry Form