Prepare a research scenario and asks you to consider two qualitative approaches you could take to investigate it

Part 1: Qualitative methods
Please read the following scenario and then answer the questions associated with it.
Women’s health and cycling in the UK
In 2015 the UK government made funds available for new cycle infrastructure and promoted cycling as part of a healthier lifestyle and to combat rising obesity rates.

Despite a gradual increase in cycling rates in the UK since then, 2019 government survey data showed that 61% of people surveyed indicated that cycling on the road was too dangerous for them. This increases to 71% for women, an overall increase in the perception of cycling as dangerous since 2015 .

Statistics also showed that in 2019 11% of adults cycled at least once a week, but that men made 2.5 times more cycle trips than women and cycled four times further on average .
Imagine you are a researcher who has been asked to explore women’s experience of cycling in the UK today, and what cycling means for them in a vehicular-dominated transport infrastructure. You have decided to approach this topic using a phenomenological methodology, and a discursive psychology methodology.
Briefly describe the approach a phenomenological researcher might take when researching this topic and state a suitable research question for a phenomenological inquiry into the topic. To answer this, describe some key aspects of the methodology they would need to research this topic
500 words
A discursive researcher has designed a project to research this topic using ten focus groups of five participants in each group. The researcher will be looking at the Interpretative Repertoires, Subject Positions and Ideological Dilemmas interpreted from the focus group data. State a suitable research question for this researcher to base their focus group questions on, and briefly discuss the strengths and limitations of using the discursive approach to research this topic.
500 words
Word limit: 1000 words in total. After Part 1, write the total word count for both parts.

Part 1: Guidance
Part 1 has two questions to answer on qualitative methods: the first involves your understanding of the phenomenological approach and method, and the second involves your understanding of the discursive approach and method.
In Question 1 of Part 1 you are asked to consider the topic described in the question in terms of how a phenomenological researcher might approach it methodologically. To do this, you should review Weeks 9 and 11, including book Chapters 7 and 8. Write a suitable research question a phenomenological researcher might use for this topic. This does not mean the actual questions an interviewer might ask people, but the wider question for which the method is trying to find an answer. So consider what the aim of a phenomenological research question might be. What are they looking for when they do research? You will find that book Chapter 8 will help you to consider this.

The question should be quite general and express this research aim in the context of the topic given to you. It might be useful to remember that qualitative research questions (of which this would be one) are not expressed in terms of quantities  or direct comparisons of groups. The first question also asks you to describe some of the key aspects of phenomenological methodology which would be used for this research. It might be helpful here to imagine you are going to conduct a small-scale phenomenological project using your research question. Would you use participants and, if so, from which age/social/gender (etc.) groups? How would you collect the data and analyze it? We don’t require a great deal of detail or explanation about this, but it would help to justify your decisions very briefly . Writing clearly and concisely will be important.

Question 2 of Part 1

Write a suitable research question , but for a discursive psychology project on the topic.Discuss the strengths and limitations of using a discursive approach to research this topic.

Again, the research question you create needs to be a broad question addressing the aims of this discursive project; it is not asking you to come up with individual questions you would ask in the focus groups, rather it is the overall guiding research question, which will guide the overarching research and focus groups discussions.

The discursive approach is discussed in Weeks 9, 12 and 13 of the module, and we think Chapters 7 and 9 of Book 1 should be particularly useful.

In Chapter 9 you can read about how identity is the main focus of discursive psychological studies, and researchers are primarily interested in the discursive construction of those identities. How could this be expressed as a research question on the given topic?

State the research question. Answer should be on providing a brief discussion of the strengths and limitations of using discursive psychology to research this topic.

In addition to Chapters 7, 9 and 10, for a discussion on strengths and limitations,find the Book 1, Chapter 1, and Week 1 materials useful. When considering strengths or limitations, make sure the point is in the context of this topic.

Write both answers as prose paragraphs, not lists. Include references in your text as you would for an essay and a reference list at the end of Part 1.

State the word count at the end of Part 1. You have only 500 words  for each answer of Part 1 so concise and clear writing will be important.