Research Seminar Presentation

I'd like to share with you my experience of presenting a seminar to the School of Natural and Built Environments after 10 months of work developing my research proposal. Finding a topic suitable for research was challenging. But today I presented a topic of research entitled The potential for rural landscape to be designated as an IUCN Category V protected area in Peninsular Malaysia. A copy of this proposal can be found by visiting myparks. Quite nervous initially because my supersivor had invited everybody within the School in the Mawson Lakes and the City East campuses.
The head of School, Prof. Patrick James (front with white shirt) had asked my supervisor about my presentation as he wanted to attend.
At 10am, I started my talk using power point presentation. I took about 30 minutes to present. Then there were several questions being raised. It took another 15 minutes for QAs.

Q Method

For the past week I've been searching for a suitable research method. Such a frustating experience. I've learned that supervisors will not be able to help you. They will always point to me and say that this is my project. Gone were the days where you are given guidance to do your work! Well I don't expect that to happen to me either. Now I'm facing my research on my own! Subject matter that is. Yes, supervisors do provide some general guidance. But in any research, I need to know what I want, why I need the data, how do I analyze them to target my data towards answering my research questions.

For the past week also, I've been making contacts and initiative to consult Dr. Greg Brown. Thanks to his critiques, his views have sharpened my knowledge and shacked up my mind to look at my topic and explore the problems in several ways. Even that too had left me with my own way and decision to get my data. The problem about me was that even though I know there's a research problem at hand that needs to be addressed, I don't quite know how to identify its research objectives, making research questions, employing suitable methodology, methods of analysis and usage of data for drawing conclusions.

But I think I have the answer! Thanks God. First, don't please your supervisor that you always follow his advise. I've learned that there are no right or wrong answers in research. Or that your supervisor will always agree about his own comments made much earlier. As your research progreses, you have to make your own decision.

Here I will use Q method. This qualitative tool measures subjectivity in a systematic way.
For my study, three groups - residents, visitors and NGOs will be asked using photographs of key attributes of the rural landscapes. I'm trying to sought their views- strongly agree to strongly disagree about desirable rural landscapes eg. scenery, recreation, wildlife, traditional farming, sustainable life, cultural tradition, etc. These descriptors are derive from a landscape assessment to be conducted by me. Usually, they are taken from past studies or literature. But I wanted this to be Malaysia example. Since consultancy and government projects studies are not published in Malaysia, I have to draw rural attributes from my own research. What a limitation in Malaysia.

Decriptors by words and photos: Subjects will Q sort all photographs according to their views. Then an in depth interview will be undertaken to asked why they decided to for that opinion.

Out of this exercise, the data wil be factored analyse using software and results will indicate their feelings and opinions about the rich rural landscape attributes presensce in the area and hence cormfirnmed as having atrributes or qualities of Cat V IUCN.