Hi guys!

I have a bigg problem right now. I am studying a MA Events Management and I am writing my disseration about how festival attendees evaluate their experiences at london outdoor music festivals. I have chosen 2 case studies (British Summer Festival and Day Field Festival) as I have been reccomended by one of my lecturers but now I am confused in what research method should be most suitable for my research.

Does anyone know if by doing surveys (quantitative research) on event experiences instead of interviews or focus group (qualitative research) my Dissertation will be not well focused?

I find quite difficult to get people accepting to be interviewed and as I want to give a general idea about London outdoor music festivals and I though that by doing surveys I will get more responses and opinions and then the results would be wider. And also I feel more comfortable doing quantitative research. But I am affraid of taking the wrong method for this topic.

Can anyone advise me please'???? I have to submit my DS on 15th September and I am very short of time! And my supervisor doesn´t help me at all as he doesn´t reply my emails.


Thank you!!!

I think you need to focus your research questions a bit and then it'll be easier to decide on a suitable methodology. For example, do you want to know something specific about people's experiences of these festivals (eg how they rate the facilities, value for money etc) or is it more an exploration of people's experiences? For quantitative research you'll normally need a larger number of participants since you'll be relying on statistics, whereas for qualitative you can have a more in-depth focus on the experiences of fewer people. How are you recruiting your participants - will you be at the festivals yourself? This may affect what you can do as well, eg normally for qualitative research you'd need to have somewhere quiet so that you can sit and interview people. You can achieve a good focus with either a quantitative or qualitative approach, but the important thing is to be very specific about what you want to know and how you are going to answer your research question, and make sure you choose an approach that will do this.

Hi! No need to panic! I agree with chickpea in that you need to stop for a moment and think about what exactly it is that you want to get out of the research and how you go about it:

What is the aim of my research?
What are my objectives?
What do I already know (from experience, literature etc)?
What do I need to find out?

All of that needs to be included in your dissertation anyway so it's useful thinking. Then you need to focus on what you need to know - is that experience based, people's opinions about the festival or is it more factual about what people did, where they went, why they attended?

Personally, if you're focusing on experience, that should be the very open questions to capture people's 'stories' which is best done qualitatively. No need to be scared of qualitative work provided that you're comfortable chatting to people! Qualitative research about people's experiences can provide rich data which is difficult to get otherwise. Both have their advantages but it entirely depends on what you want out of it.

Within that you do need to consider recruitment. I know you mentioned a wider survey might give you more general results but how would you make sure they were part of those two festivals? Have you got a way to target to those specified festivals? If you did want to do qualitative then you could try telephone interviews as an option? It's quite a niche field to recruit, particularly if you are focusing on those two festivals but there are options - do they have a website forum? If you don't focus it on those two festivals - could you find forums to post on that would be relevant?

My bias is always to go with qualitative for experience but that is my personal opinion only because I design and carry out patient experience research for the NHS.

I don't know if I've been any more help but good luck!

Thank you very much for your posts! It is always nice to meet people able to help :)

My problem is that I haven´t heard anything from my supervisor since I was writing my research proposal, so my mark and feedback of that was quite poor. Initially my idea was to generalise about UK festivall, so I could interview festival-goers within UK festivals, but as my supervisor didn´t even confirm if my topic was ok or not, one of the main points on my feedback (research proposal) was that my topic was too borad and that instead of interviewing people who have attended any festival would be much better to focus on case studies. That´s why I chose thse 2 mentioned earlier.

My idea is to find out about their experiences by applying the Mogan´s event experience prism which attempts to bring together on one side the external and internal event management elements such as physiscal organization (operational and administrative efficiency), relationships (social interaction), personal benefits (enjoyment, fun, etc.), design personality (design, programme), culture (traditions, meanings of the festival) and symbolic meanings (identification with the meanings and values of the event).

So asking to my participants about these aspects I will be able to find out what are their experiences, how they evaluate them and whether they give more importance to external elements rather than internal, so these results can be useful as future strategies for all organisers who plan and organise an outdoor music festivals in London.

Regarding the methodology used, If I use qualitative, As I can´t attend the festvals, I thought in contacting my target via social media (facebook, twitter, etc) through the profiles of the 2 festivals, and festival forums and just ask who would like to participate. I have contacted a few peopleo but the problem is that they are not available for focus group or face to face interviews, so.. my other option was telephone or email interviews, but my question is:

Which method is better or more complete, telephone or email interviews? And, if I use one of these 2, would my work be worst or lower marked than using face to face interviews? as I won´t be able to record them or see participants.


Again, thank you very much for your suggestions and recommendations! I really appreciate :)

Yes, your original idea does sound quite broad and narrowing your topic is always helpful for a MA dissertation so it does sound like you've done the right thing.

I think qualitative would work best given the event experience prism you explained as it will give you a greater change of delving into the different aspects. I would suggest telephone interviews would be the best option. The reason I say that is I think they are second to face to face interviews because you can still hear the person, you can prompt (if using semi-structured interviewing which I usually find the most helpful) and you can pick up on things which is harder to do by email. There is no reason why you can't record the interviews over the telephone providing you are able to conduct them somewhere quiet where you can have the phone on loud speaker. Obviously you would have to tell the participant that this is what you were planning to do and ask their consent to record but usually people are okay with it. If some aren't, then you just have to explain to them you will be taking detailed notes as you go along.

Hope this helps. Feel free to send me a private message if you feel it would be helpful.

Thank you for your message. You are so helpful.

After your suggestions and some research I decided to conduct phone/skype interviews as I think this will be the best option.

I will work on it and I will contact you if I have any questions. Thank you very much!