Kaylin Hawkins

Briony Waite
Professor Scott Wible
Engl297
6 November 2015
Research Proposal for Ethnographic Research Project
Introduction: This research project will explore the role technical writing plays in an athletic
organization. Specifically, we are interested in learning about what types of documents these
types of organizations are founded on and produced for their members. In addition, we will study
what types of standards guide the writing practices involved in the composition of these
documents.
Research Subject:
Our research subject is Ankur Naik, a senior marketing major in the business school at
the University of Maryland. He is one of the co-presidents of the UMD club swim team, a
position that he has held since the start of last semester. The UMD club swim team is a noncompetitive option for UMD students who want to swim in college. There are currently around
200 active members (members who pay dues). As one of the presidents of this team, Ankur has
many duties. One of his most important duties is collaborating with the other members of the
executive board (co president, vice president, fundraising chair, and treasurer) to make sure
everyones responsibilities are completed. He also decides which meets the team will attend and
emails the hosting team to get information, which he then sends to the team. Ankur says that
although this is not a writing-based position, he still has to use writing in many different
situations, which we aim to learn more about through this project.
Research Questions: Because the organization is not writing based, a bulk of of our questions
will aim to uncover how big of a role writing does play in an athletic organization. Firstly, we
will investigate how much writing the leaders of the organization do in their daily administrative
responsibilities that keep the club running. This will include questions such as; How much time
do you spend writing a day? How many documents does Club Swimming produce or circulate in
any given week? Such questions will help to give us an idea of how important writing is to an
organization that is not necessarily writing based. After establishing how significant writing is to
an athletic club, we will specify our questions to reveal more information about the actual
content of the documents being produced. This part of the interview will center around the
function, audience, and genres that the documents are produced for. This will include questions
like What type of documents do you produce? Which of these documents are circulated among
members of club leadership and which of these are distributed to members? What is the
difference in purposes for these two audience bases? For what events are these documents
produced for? Such questions will conclude our first set of interview questions aimed at the

documents themselves. Our second interview will have the more specific goal of researching
what goes into the actual composition of these documents. We will ask questions such as How
does your audience affect the word choice and writing style of the piece? What have you found
to be the best format type to get the message of the document across? How do differing genres or
situations surrounding the document affect how it is composed? How do founding documents of
the club (constitution) dictate how you go about writing following documents? These questions
will supplement the first interview conducted, as they will reveal specific information about the
type of technical writing used in an athletic organization. While such organizations may seem
like an unusual setting for technical writing, these questions will effectively prove that technical
writing does have a role in the athletic field and expose how it is been altered to fit this particular
field.
Data Collection Methods: Our primary data collection will come from the two interviews we
conduct. The answers to the previously stated questions will serve as the basis for the finished
product of our research project. These interviews will be conducted on a discourse-based format.
We will ask our pre-planned questions, but we will expand upon them as we hear the subjects
answers. This will help us to get more thorough answers from the expert on the subject and could
potentially provide us with useful information we had not thought to ask for. In addition to the
interviews, we will be collecting actual documents produced by the club. These will include
newsletters, official correspondences between members of the club leadership, documents used
in the planning of meets and events, and the Constitution that the club is founded upon. We hope
these documents will serve as a good supplement to the interview questions we asked about
them. They will give us a chance to take our own look at the documents, giving a different
perspective on the technical writing involved there than the subject who produced them. We will
also be observing a meeting of the club leaders. By observing how the leaders communicate and
what they communicate about, we can compare this information to the documents already
collected to see how that information is translated into the format required by the document.
Lastly, we will complete our data collection with background research. While the interviews,
documents, and observations will provide us with information specific to Club Swimming at the
University of Maryland, background research will give us a wider perspective on technical
writing in athletic organizations. By researching documents produced by other sports
organizations and the standards guiding them, we will get an idea of how technical writing fits
into athletics in general. A level of background research will also supply us with enough
knowledge on the subject to form well-informed interview questions to ask the subject.
Data analysis: Because of our wide array of research sources, our data analysis will be a multi-step process. First we will compile our subjects interview answers into a comprehensive list of
information on the topics we were looking for. Specifically, we will break these answers down
into categories that could accompany each of our other methods of data collection. Firstly, we
will analyze the answers about who does the writing and how the club leadership communicates
to get all the writing done. We will pair these answers with our notes from our ethnographic

observation session. Using these two sources of information, we will get a good idea of writing
in the more general context of the organizations culture, as discussed in Jim Henrys chapter of
Solving Problems in Technical Communication. We will compile our fieldnotes to get an idea of
the organizations structure and typical administration. From our notes we will be looking for
who does what, how they do it, and how these tasks are delegated and managed. Combining our
personal notes with the answers given by the actual member of the organization on the subject of
the cultures organization will give us a well-rounded idea of the structure of the organization
and how technical writing fits into it. Next, we will pull the questions about what types of
documents are written and what they are written for. We will analyze the information given by
answers to those questions alongside the actual documents we collected. This information will
give us an idea of the genres used by the club described by Brent Henze in Solving Problems in
Technical Communication. To determine the genres utilized by Club Swimming, we will analyze
the types of textual conventions used across the documents we were given. Analyzing the
purpose, intended audience, and how these two affect the writing of club swim, along with the
interview answers on the subject, will give us a good idea of typical conventions of writing used
in athletic organizations and why. This is crucial to our project, as it is a leading aim of our initial
research question. We will further our study of genres by analyzing the information gathered
from our background research. Because most of our background research will be conducted
through reading documents provided by other sports organizations, analyzing these will be a big
part of answering how technical writing fits into the field of athletics. We will again consider the
conventions of writing and their intended audiences used in these documents to uncover a few
basic genres used in writing for athletics. Comparing these to our study of the documents
provided by Club Swimming will give us a general idea of how similar uses of technical writing
and which genres fit in across the entire field. Each of these separate analyses together will give
us a thorough investigation of writing in the organizational culture specific to Club Swimming at
the University of Maryland and the more general use of technical writing and genres across all
athletic organizations.
Schedule of work:
11/5: Make initial contact with research subject to get availability and outline project.
11/9: Have initial background research done and interview questions drafted.
11/11: First interview with subject (focusing on administrative aspects of the club and how
writing is used among club leaders)
11/15: Ethnographic research. Observe Captains meeting.
11/15: Second interview with subject following ethnographic observations (focusing on
documents produced, their purpose, audience, and writing conventions guiding their
composition)
11/16: Complete outside research on writing in athletic organizations (ongoing)
Compile and analyze data, and complete draft of Ethnographic Research Project.