Five Nights at Freddy's one-shots

Please skip, it's my IA assessment

Throughout my project, I practiced observation among a community of people by the use of surveys in order to gather the information. This combined use of observation and surveys, allowed me to create a research field capable of producing enough information to be able to consider it an ethnographic research project. These methods are capable of getting a more comprehensive view into the lives of people just going out to get some lunch, benefitting me on discovering more into trends found in society.

In my field work, I started off by using basic observation. In this phase, I had taken a seat just out front of the Train Station Diner, to watch various people at various times come and go. Throughout this portion, I wasn't looking for anything too particular, I knew, at this phase, though, that I would focus on ages. So I would write down the general age of the people coming in and what times they entered. The groups that had stuck out to me the most were the elderly couple that had come in around eleven, the family with the two sons and the daughter who had seemed rather rambunctious, and the group of teenage boys who were loud and a little all over the place that had come in closer to twelve in the afternoon. Based on these observations, my initial assumption on how the day would go was pretty accurate: the older the couples, the earlier in the day. This set a perfect base for the rest of my Internal Assessment.

For my second fieldwork observation, I had a set idea as to what to observe at the Train Station Diner, compared to my initial observation, where I had been hoping that there was a trend to follow. My inquiry-specific concept that I had originally focused on, was change, but when writing down my data, I realized a fatal flaw. Change was not the best inquiry-specific concept to focus on in this environment and study of people. In fact, I believe that social relations would have been a better fit. When I was studying the people at the diner, I went with the distribution of short surveys, I figured that surveys were the best way of understanding the habits of the population of Sebastian. I got various different reactions from the people I asked to fill out my surveys, many were very interested in what my project observation was, some were a little bit skeptical, as they maybe thought I was trying to get them to sign up for something. The way that I handed out the surveys, allowed one person from each group to get one to fill out on behalf of their companions. I was excited to see how many people were eager to fill them out and ask me questions, including one elderly woman who was eager to tell me about her "retirement schedule" which she was proud to explain that she had developed just for this moment. We laughed about it for a bit, I figured maybe it was my youth or outgoing personality that persuaded her to participate. Surveys were One, the information I can gain from my surveys was concise and straight to the point, and two, I was at a diner and no doubt, people wanted to go in and eat, which encouraged me to make it as short as possible. I handed out an even ten surveys, six went to elderly couples or groups, and the other four went to a combination of families and teenagers. I discovered that many did, in fact, prefer to eat around a set time. I decided to focus this research on the customers only, rather than the employees.

If I did another observation like this one, I would have been more hyper aware of the inquiry-specific topic of which I was studying, to avoid the mistake of trying to create a project around an inappropriate focus. And though the diner was a great place to observe, due to its size, there wasn't many surveys to be handed out, which made my results seem a little skewed. It may also be good to change the topic of my surveys to better fit the proper category of "social relations". I could add questions such as "who do you prefer to dine with" or "how often do you prefer to go out to eat". Questions more closely related to how people worked out their daily lives. Though I didn't get any form of written consent from the people I interviewed, I did go into length on explaining why I was doing these surveys, and what the end goal was, which piqued many's attention. I did not get specific permission from the owner of the diner to be able to conduct my school project, but one employee did happen to come out and ask what I was working on. He explained to me that he was alright with it, and it made me wonder if he would mind if I would be able to hang up a copy of my observations for people to see.