2.02 Research Strategy

understand the imbalance to know how to best combat it, this will come from specific industry-related questions and the difference between the male and female answers

2.02 Research Strategy

Groat and Wang, (2013)stated inArchitectural research methods “having established parameters for defining architectural research, and research in general, the challenge of clarifying “methods” becomes central” .

After an examination of the seven research strategies that Groat and Wang present qualitative research would be the best way forwards when tackling the question ‘How does gender affect career progression within the UK?’

The reasoning behind this is that qualitative research as reported by Groat and Wang (2013) is a multimethod tacticthat involves a naturalapproach, aiding in the interpretation of how people perceive things with first-hand accounts. This will allow for the use of how people make sense of the environment they are in, while simultaneously remaining anonymous. With something that is a sensitive topic such as gender imbalance, especially within the field of architecture,allowing anonymity should provide a more accurate and well-rounded research outcome when using qualitative research methods.

After exploration of additional attributes from Groat and Wang, (2013) on qualitative research the main aspects relevant to the title would be:

- Holistic research: using multiple perspectives on a small number of questions to develop a complex picture. o Asking multiple participants from different demographics such as age, career status, and gender, within the North-East of England, to gather understanding and knowledge on the generalised response from each demographic and how they are similar or different from one another

- Open-ended: the allowance of a shift in processes and viewpoints during the data collection stage o To do this within the context of this report would be to ask yes or no questions and allow the participant to follow up with a more detailed answer about how or why. - Analysis through words: using the answers and comments from the data collection as the main measurement device.

o Using the data collected and grouping them regarding age and gender before collecting the answers to both the open and closed-ended questions to enable an analysis of how each demographic (age and gender) views gender imbalance within their architectural practices.