Project Part One: Survey Notes

Analysis of Survey Draft and Creation Notes/Reasoning For Official Project Survey

The first part of my project is a survey to be completed by professional dancers or those in professional training. These results will give me the basis in which to develop my experiment (the second part of my project involving student/amateur dancers). Below are notes used to form my final survey.

I have looked back at my first draft of my survey and analysed the results concentrating on the relevance of each question, thus creating my official survey for the project. (See figure A below for draft survey questions)

I have allowed the initial questions for some back ground and basic information from participants, for example gender and length of professional dance training.

The question asking which gender; male or female to useful to know for varying results, my project is only aimed at female students, so survey results may show that there is a difference or no contrast between opinions of gender

I queried the question asking “how many years of professional dance training” had the participant experienced, concerned as to whether it should it be how many years of dance training (professional or non) had they completed. The dancers completing the survey should all be professional dancers so is it relevant to know any of this. I concluded on asking how many years of professional training has they experienced, followed by how many years had they worked professionally. I decided on this version of the question because the survey is concentrating on the professional aspect of their dancing career so questions should focus on that.

I added in the question of how many years have they worked professionally as a dancer as the amount of experience can affect opinions on the best way to learn choreography.

The point of the survey is to find out how professional dancers believe they learn best so it would be of relevance to their opinions knowing how many years they've trained and how many years they've worked both professionally. Options include not having trained, yet they may have worked professionally, less than one year as they may have dropped out or got work during training, one to two years, a short professional course, 3 years the standard length of training, 4 to 6 they may have done a couple of consecutive course and 7+ they may have attended a dance school then continued on to college.

I scrapped the question about age as this doesn't tell me anything, dancers can train at different ages and talent is not based on age therefore the answers would not fit with their careers and tell me nothing about reflecting on their opinions to learn dance.

“What element of learning a piece of choreography accurately is most important?” I added in this question as this directly gives me answers to my main question from a professional dancer's opinion, which means if 100 dancers complete the survey I would have 100 different ideas in which to base my experiment or ideas to trial in my experiment.

I eliminated the question about famous choreographers as this holds no relevance as the dancers have not danced with them, however asking their favourite choreographer that they had worked with and how they taught their choreography was an interesting question and it showed different approaches to teaching that dancers enjoyed and got on well with professionally. This question also helps to bring an awareness to dancers' own learning.

The “style of dance question” is not relevant to my project, as I will be teaching street jazz either way. I have to stick to the usual outline of the class I will be imposing the experiment upon, therefore I need to stick to the usual street jazz style. The students come to the class out of choice not just another part of their training as some professional dancers do, which means finding out if a style makes a difference would be unnecessary as the experiment can't allow a change of style. However I did mention in my proposal about mixing styles into street jazz such as street ballet and street Bollywood..

The question asking about “liking the choreography or not”, 80% said yes that if they liked the choreography they would learn it better. This is an obvious question to ask and is irrelevant to the experiment. Also the “familiar steps” question is bound to be a yes answer from most, making it pointless to be included. During the experiment choreography will be kept similar to control the changes of variables.

Figure A First draft survey

1.What is your gender?
2.How old are you
3.How many years have you trained professionally as a dancer?
4.Who is your all-time favourite choreographer that you haven't worked with and why?
5.Who is your all-time favourite choreographer that you have worked with and how did they teach their choreography to you?
6.How easy do you find each aspect of choreography?
7.What style of dance/choreography do you most enjoy learning?
8.Does it make a difference to how well you a dance whether you like the choreography or not?
9.If movements are familiar does it make it easier to learn a routine?
10. Which ways do you find easiest to learn a dance well?