Free High School Science Texts: Identification of Emergent Themes
Identifying themes from your narrative survey responses is about looking for overlaps, redundancies, and even anomalies. The example below is from a Free High School Science Texts (FHSST) survey question. One theme that surfaces is that the volunteers seem to recruit their friends and colleagues, sometimes to work in face-to-face settings as a way to inspire their own work and stay motivated.
Survey Question: Have you encouraged others to participate in the FHSST project? If so, please explain whom you recruited and why.
| Survey Responses
| Emergent Themes
|
| Volunteer 1: I started out working on FHSST by getting together a group of about 5 friends (other SFSU students). I thought this would make it easier for me to work, and that we would get more done in a short period of time. I think both those turned out to be true. I've also recruited some other Berkeley grad students and summer undergrad students by inviting them to Hackathons [i.e. face-to-face content creation meetings].
| Recruiting acquaintances/students; Working together to provide motivation; Face-to-face content creation
|
| Volunteer 2: Just one other person. I met her while doing a volunteer holiday teaching program. She expressed an interest in getting more involved in educational projects, so I discussed FHSST with her as an option she could do in any available time
| Recruiting acquaintances/students
|
| Volunteer 3: I am coming from a life sciences back ground. I'm afraid that the technological learning curve involved in contributing might be somewhat difficult for my somewhat less tech savvy friends.
| Technological hurdle to contributing content
|
| Volunteer 4: I have recruited other graduate students because I enjoyed the project so much myself and thought others might enjoy it as well.
| Recruiting acquaintances/students
|
| Volunteer 5: I have recruited other graduate students at my school.
| Recruiting acquaintances/students
|
| Volunteer 6: Yes, I attracted 4 people to participate. They where fellow graduate students. They had a keen interest to help out. Unfortunately only 2 of the 4 actively participated – but it was certainly a big help. It helped me a great deal to be able to work with other people.
| Recruiting acquaintances/students; Working together to provide motivation
|
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