#9/10 Final Thoughts
Prompt:
These three things I know for certain about outdoor recreation Research: These three things I am still confused by: These three things I know for certain about me as an outdoor recreation researcher: These three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills: Each of your responses will be unique to you based on your own invisible backpacks, your particular interests, your academic background, etc. Think about how you might present this in an engaging way (Will another form of communication help? Art? Music? Something else?). Integrate whatever material you need in order to make this a strong final post (and do reference at least four chapters of the textbook)
Answer:
I found this a challenging blog to write. I feel like I have attended class this term but struggled to pull out the key ideas and concepts. I really wish I would have been able to take more out of this course than I did.
These three things I know for certain about outdoor recreation Research:
Ethics Approvals take a long time but are very important. From taking the tutorial we had to take at the beginning of this class to listening to the presentation I watched during research and innovation week and through lengthy class discussions. I have come to the conclusion that ethics is so important in any research that you do. Not only to protect yourself but to protect your participants. This makes me rethink how much time and effort must be put into place to even start research that requires ethics approval. It has also made me think there are more topics than I realized that require you to think about the ethics before you can research them.
Qualitative and quantitative research. As much as everyone wrote about this topic as something they know for certain, I too agree. I think this idea was really hammer in hard and that many of the other things we talked about came back to this idea based on the type of research you are doing. As we have learned Quantitative research surrounds numbers, quantity and amounts with a study and Qualitative research is the more humanistic side in which personal communications are made with participants and you hear first hand experiences and stories (Neuman, 2018).
There is a very wide range of research that can be done in outdoor recreation. I feel as though there are many unexplored areas of research in outdoor recreation. I do not have any ideas as to that these areas might be but I feel like when I look as one thing such as representation of women in the outdoors vs portrait in the media through the analysis of the movie WILD (The topic of my English paper) that I have come to see how this stems off into many other topics such as women’s perspective on it or how the impact of a movie like this impacted women who wanted to thru hike.
These three things I am still confused by:
How to get ethics approval and how to know if your research topic requires it? Despite all the talk of ethics and how important it is, I feel I have no idea how to go about applying for ethics approval if I needed it for my research. I have a general understanding that research on children, controversial topics and minority groups require ethics approval but how do you know if your topic needs it?
Why are academic articles written in ways that are so challenging to understand?
If you spend all that time researching why does the academic world see themselves all high and mighty and want to have their information as something that the general population cannot comprehend.
What to do with this information from this course. At this time in my life while doing my undergrad I do not see myself doing a thesis or a directed study so I guess I just hold this information in my back pocket until it comes time that I decide I want to do more professional style research.
These three things I know for certain about me as an outdoor recreation researcher:
I care a lot about the work I submit and I think I would struggle to conduct research as I am a perfectionist and do not like submitting things I am not proud of. I am also very indecisive and I think that I would have trouble committing to a research topic and sticking with it as I know I am not a very resilient person when it comes to work and I give up. So this whole concept of research if I was not 100% interested and motivated, I would probably end up giving up. I have realized I put a lot of pressure on myself and sometimes I forget to enjoy doing school work or just enjoy life. I do not know if I can say I know anything for certain as I am still figuring myself out.
I would enjoy both qualitative and quantitative research as I like; conducting surveys, interviews etc. and looking at patterns. I am not a numbers person and I have never been good at math but I really like analyzing patterns and trends. I also really like people watching.
Like Morgan said in her post, I like the field of women’s studies and I didn’t even know it was an option as a double degree until we had that one guest speaker come in. If I was not in education I would do a double degree with women’s studies. I really like looking at women in this field as that is my future and I want to see how I can improve it for myself.
These three areas I need to spend time developing/learning in order to feel more confident in my skills:
To not jump on the bandwagon, I notice that often I will be motivated to do something and then I hear all my friends saying “oh this sucks” or talking about how much they dislike something. I feel I need to stay true to how I feel and focus on doing what is best for me. I had the potential to really draw a lot of valuable information out of this course and I should have been a more active participant because I am not here to just get the degree, I should use this opportunity to absorb as much information as I can along the way.
This course has made me realize I have quite the invisible backpack and I need to be mindful when I am conducting research, or really anything. I am very fortunate to have the experiences I have had that have led me to be here today. I am grateful for this university experience and I should make the most of it.
I need to be confident in picking a topic I am interested in and sticking with it. I would love to be a more gritty person who does not give up on things. When I was in grade 9, my geography teacher made us take a quiz to see how gritty we are. I did not score on the gritty side and this is something I think about a lot.
I know this is not the most academic blog and does not reference a whole lot of course material but as much as I feel I struggled with this course, I did take some important lessons and information out of it.
References:
Neuman, W. L., & Robson, K. (2018). Chapter 3 Ethics in Social Research. In Basics of Social Research Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (4th Canadian Edition, pp. 40 - 62). essay, Pearson.
Neuman, W. L., & Robson, K. (2018). Chapter 4 Reviewing the Scholarly Literature and Planning a Study. In Basics of Social Research Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (4th Canadian Edition, pp. 62 - 79). essay, Pearson.
Neuman, W. L., & Robson, K. (2018). Chapter 5 Designing a Study. In Basics of Social Research Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (4th Canadian Edition, pp. 79 – 102). essay, Pearson.
Neuman, W. L., & Robson, K. (2018). Chapter 6 Qualitative and Quantitative Measurement. In Basics of Social Research Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (4th Canadian Edition, pp. 103 - 130). essay, Pearson.





















