Where I am at.....

This entry is to not only let Clive know where I stand in my process, but also lets me make sense of what I have been doing the last week!!!! I am just at the start of my reading week and over the past few days I have been speaking and meeting with the children and their parents to see when I am able to carry out my observations. Both parents have agreed and I have their consent to observe their children and record the data in whatever way I find most suitable and beneficial to my study.

I have decided that I will be video recording the children when carrying out the 'strange situation' and will have a digital recorder present when performing the intellectual tests. Here, I will be able to transcribe the intellectual observations and place them all as raw data in my appendix. I would also like to make use of still pictures to show siginifcant moments in the 'strange situation' and to highlight to the reader in a visual context these points. All of this equipment is available to me through the Student Media Services and I have been in talks with Howard about the use and availability! I am in the process of using a digital recorder, it is a new piece of equpiment that is being used to try and replace the old tape recorders. I have to be honest, it looks pretty high-tech and very cool!!!! Yet, Howard ensures me that it is easy to use and if I have any trouble with any of the equipment to just phone him! Such a nice man! The process that I am carrying out now on the digital recorder will allow me to be fully confident when I come to use it for my dissertation! This, fingers crossed, will be happening in the next week!

I am having to go home on Thursday for family reasons and I do have to carry out an interview on my younger sister for another assignment (yes I will be using the digital recorder!!!) But I will be back up on Sunday and by the end of next week, I hope to have all my data collected!!! Ahhh!!!

I have also decided that I will be carrying out an interview on my mother. I want it to be only informal and it may happen that I do not even use it in my final piece, but it will be about my own experience of my up-bringing and how I reacted to mother-child seperation. As I was so young, obviously I do not remember if I was 'clingy' towards my mother or quite happy to be placed in unfamiliar surroundings. For my own personal knowledge, I would like to carry out this interview and also it may fit in nicely around the topic that I am looking into! Also I get to use the digital recorder again!!!