Depending on your own disciplinary background and interests – whether this is travel medicine; tourism studies; sociology of risk; or economics – you may choose to approach this question very differently. 

Your interests, for example, may be related to immunization and knowledge of specific health risks, in which case you might select a particular range of destinations.  In this case, you might consider collaborating with travel medicine specialists in order to work up a proposal around this question.

Alternatively you might be wishing to explore fears of terrorism post 9/11 – in which case you might wish to compare American travellers with others (although in the wake of the London bombings and other specific incidents you might a wish to focus on travellers to and from specific localities).

Amongst other possibilities you might think about contacting - via a travel agent -respondents who have booked package holidays (including perhaps adventure holidays). However, with so many people now booking travel independently via websites, you might consider other sampling strategies (involving online recruitment – for example, through a Facebook page, blog or project-specific twitter feed) in order to access a wider range of travellers, such an independent travellers or gap year students. You might also think about conducting interviews at an airport (thinking about capitalizing on seasonal variations in order to recruit different sorts of travellers – e.g. avoiding or utiliszng school holiday periods, depending on which groups you are interested in).

There are many ways in which you could approach this question. Again, depending on your own disciplinary focus, you might want to explore how this issue translates into specific contexts – such as the criminal justice system and sentencing; health or social care provision and the transition fro child to adult services; or even educational models.

You might decide not to generate your own data, but to rely on media coverage, such as newspaper reports, television, magazine problem pages or online discussion forums. Alternatively you could select observational fieldwork, interviews or focus groups in order to elicit people’s perspectives. You might want to concentrate on the views of young people themselves, or you might want to talk to parents (possibly including those with adult offspring still living or recently returned to the family home) or other individuals - such as college or university lecturers, social workers, clinical psychologists or psychiatrists - who have professional contact with young adults

Your focus here might be on the social policy implications, funding decisions or, perhaps, the response to same sex couples.

It is unlikely that merely looking at media coverage and analyzing its content would not answer your question. However, you could still utilize pre-existing sources of data, by drawing on letters pages of newspapers or magazines online discussion forums or twitter feeds– concentrating on the period immediately after a feature on this topic. Although existing on-line discussion groups might also be a fruitful source of data, these are likely to be run by groups with vested interests or particular ‘axes to grind’.

You might choose to generate your own data, using interviews or focus groups, or you might even decide to set up your own on-line discussion group for research purposes. (See discussion in Chapter 14 about uses of the Internet

Rather than focusing on the general public you could (access and ethical approval (See Chapter 4 l permitting) decide to carry out observational fieldwork - particularly if you are interested in professional practice in maternity units. You could also use interviews or focus groups – perhaps to explore the intentions of couples expecting a first baby, as I did in an interview study (Barbour, 1989 – which also drew on observational fieldwork in labour wards, carried out as part of a bigger study of midwives’ roles and responsibilities) If you are interested in discourses appealed to and created by different groups you might want to carry out discourse analysis of naturally-occurring discussions – perhaps at state-provided parentcraft classes or National Childbirth classes (which tend to attract couples of differing socio-economic backgrounds).

(N.B. This is the topic involved in the exercise at the end of Chapter 6, which encourages you to generate your own data using focus groups.)

Although you might choose to focus on those about to become parents, I suspect that you are more likely to opt to study those who are actively engaged in parenting at the moment. You would have to decide which age groups you are interested in - pre-school children;, 5-12 year olds,, or perhaps adolescents? You might be interested, however, in exploring the different perceptions of young as compared to older parents, or even grandparents who have assumed parenting responsibilities. The most likely sources for recruitment would probably be via schools or community groups. You might also want to think about including parents who home-educate their children or travellers whose children may attend particular schools only intermittently, or parenting at a distance - for estranged parents (usually fathers); parents whose child/ren are in the care system after having been removed from home; or individuals serving prison sentences.

In the field you are likely to discover that many people will have children of varying ages and that parenting even of young children is likely to involve anticipation of later stages. It would be a pity not to capitalize on this inbuilt comparative potential. One workshop focus group session (focusing on generating data on this topic) yielded several participants who were grandparents and you might even think about including grandparents, particularly if you are interested in how ideas differ between the generations.

Your interest might be in parents dealing with particular health or behavioural problems affecting their children or themselves – and hence their capacity to parent. This might involve recruiting parents via clinics or specialist services

Although it would be possible to address this question using survey methods, qualitative methods can afford insights into the process of opinion formation in relation to this topical issue. Rather than attempting to investigate the views of an undifferentiated ‘general public’ you might wish to focus on particular groups within the general population, perhaps comparing the perspectives of people of different ages or social class position. You might be interested in views of people living in a particular locality – perhaps in the light of specific debates or controversies that have arisen

Focus groups are likely to be of particular value in unpicking how people form their views on climate change. Depending on your disciplinary background, you might want to research this as an example of how members of the public engage in political discussions. If so, you might be interested in reading the recent book by Duchesne et al. (2013), who used focus groups alongside other methods to explore how political issues are debated and negotiated in public spaces. This book also provides some helpful discussion on research design issues.

‘Climate change’ is a somewhat slippery term and you are likely to benefit from careful selection of stimulus materials in order to focus discussion on those issues of particular concern to you as a researcher. If your interest is on how people process media messages you might focus on particular campaigns, and might even show participants a film – as did Howell (2011) – albeit in conjunction with a survey.
When trying to ‘get a handle’ on challenging concepts such as ‘climate change’ visual methods may be especially valuable – especially in relation to eliciting material from participants. For an example of work which used this approach in relation to climate change see Kasemir et al. (2000) who reproduced in this journal article some of the materials they elicited from research participants.

If your research interests extend to exploring the discourses that are available and/or accessed by members of the public you might also want to use other sources, including blogs of campaigners, or online interviews with high profile individuals (campaigners, politicians or policy makers).

If your interest is on re-cycling behaviour, however, you might wish to carry out some observational work, in order to explore the links between what people say and what they do. You might consider talking firstly to staff and policy-makers with responsibilities related to re-cycling, and then, perhaps, using this data to inform the interview or focus group questions you want to put to the general public

Alternatively you might want to amend the research question to allow you to focus on people who are likely to have influence in shaping the views of the general public. If so, you might choose to carry out elite interviews with journalists, politicians, campaigners or policy-makers

• Duchesne,. S., Frazer, E., Haegel, F. and van Ingelgom, V. (eds.) (2013) Citizens’ Reactions to European Integration Compared: Overlooking Europe: Basingstoke, Hampshire/New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

• Howell, R.A. (2011) ‘Lights, camera … action? Altered attitudes and behaviour in response to the climate change film “The Age of Stupid”’, Global Environmental Change, 21: 177-187.

• Kasemir, B., Dahinden,U., Swartling, Å.G., Schüle, R. Tabara, D. and Jaeger, C.C. (2000) ‘Citizens’ perspectives on climate change and energy use’, Global Environmental Change, 10: 169-184.