My Research Question(s)

I'm writing this blog post in response to a prompt from the session on Methodology and Methods. Within the allotted three minutes, I came up with a few research questions for my project. It was great to have a time limit (thank you, Astrid) as I had little time to over-analyse my initial thoughts. The questions and sub-questions I came up with all centre around one topic: professional ballet dancers' career transition. I scraped on the subject in my module one essay and found a lot of exciting research on the matter, but also some so-called 'gaps' in the research.

The questions that popped into my mind are:

- What are the emotional and practical struggles faced by professional ballet dancers upon career transition?

- Is it beneficial for dancers to have a wide range of interests growing up instead of being hyper-focused on ballet? 

- Do most professional ballet dancers choose when and how they retire, or do external circumstances force it?

- What are the so-called 'transferrable' skills that professional ballet dancers have to transition into another career path?

- Do most professional ballet dancers have a plan for their career after ballet? 

Looking at these questions, I think my research will involve a mix of qualitative and quantitative data. I can imagine using polls with tick-boxes to gather quantitative data and conducting two to three detailed interviews to gather qualitative data.