Developing ethical frameworks for my inquiry

Through careful study of Part 5 I have come up with the following ethical framework for my professional inquiry.

My participants are a freelance female professional ballet dancer, a marketing officer (although I am still waiting on clarification of the exact person I would need to speak to) from a leading UK ballet company who has access to information regarding box office sales of different productions, a small focus group of ten people who will fill out short interview style questionnaires after watching a performance I give. The focus group will have participants from five different age categories, they will be of different genders and at least two of them will have little experience of watching classical ballet.

I have chosen the freelance ballet dancer because she has worked across a wide variety of contexts and I am hoping to get an insight into where she as an artist felt the deepest connection to her audience - in what roles and in which contexts. In a way Anna Pavlova could be considered a freelance ballet dancer of her time and so I felt that interviewing a freelancer of today will help me to gain insight into what elements of a performance audiences appreciate today.

I have chosen to interview a marketing officer from a ballet company because I want to discover which of their performances sell best and what is in least public demand. I am hoping to illuminate the extent to which the audience contributes to the decisions made about repertoire for each season. This will help me find out what the current trends are in ballet and analyse the possible reasoning for this.

I have chosen to invite an audience to watch me dance because I need to be sure of adequate numbers. The performance will however be open to the public and I will have extra questionnaires and consent forms for anyone else wishing to participate in the interview/questionnaire sheets. I have chosen my participants to ensure a full spectrum of ages and experience of watching dance. Even though this is a small number of people, it is still an audience of today and therefore the reading is still valid.

I will contact the freelance ballet dancer who I already have some connection with by email asking for her consent to participate, she also has my email address.

Contacting the ballet company l is going to be a slightly more complicated procedure as I will need to go through the gate keepers of the company in order to find out exactly the person with whom I need to speak. I will have to receive ethical permission from the company as well as the official I interview.

I intend to send out invitations to people to attend the performance, explaining the exact nature of the inquiry and how the information in the questionnaire sheets will be used.

In the event that the freelance ballet dancer refuses to participate in the inquiry I will have two more people as back-up, who I will contact if necessary after I have received an answer from my first choice.

I have a number of possible UK ballet companies lined up to approach so that if one refuses I can approach another.

I will send invitations out to 25 people for the local performance so that I will hopefully end up with a at least 10 definite audience members.

All names will be protected and participants will remain anonymous. They will simply be referred to as a female freelance ballet dancer, marketing officer of a ballet company (although I have yet to find out the exact title of the person I will interview) and audience member (60+ category, female)

I intend to propose interview and questionnaire questions in which I only ask what is necessary, which are not leading and do not pre-empt the response of participants. I will send out letters or emails explaining exactly the nature of the inquiry, how the participants information will be used and for how long it will be kept. There will be a page which they will need to sign and send back to me to give their consent to being involved in the project. The children under the age of 18 who fill out the questionnaires will have a consent section which needs to be filled out by the parents.  I will be completely honest with the reporting of the data I gather and never change what has been said or just use selected material to suit my personal view point.

The performance I put on will be a free event at my local town hall. I will fund the venue myself but will ask people attending to give donations if they wish. I realised that if I am going to have an invited audience I cannot expect them to pay and therefore it would be discriminatory to charge members of the public who may wish to come to the performance, to have some people attending for free and others paying would not fit in with my inclusive ethical outlook. I hope that at the same time as being beneficial to my inquiry this event will also bring in people who may otherwise not attend a ballet performance because they cannot afford to pay for a ticket. I will use it as a means to broaden the audience for dance in my local area. By having the event open to the public, I will also be able to see how popular a performance of this sort is and by making it free there can be no financial influences, i.e ‘they felt it was too expensive’ and this will further influence the outcome of my inquiry.

I will clearly cite all the resources I use in my inquiry these will include all literature, videos, photos, programmes and live performances I watch which have any impact on my inquiry