Tim Jones provides an update on progress and looks ahead to the next phase of the cycle BOOM project.
It’s been a busy summer for cycle BOOM. The researchers have been busy recruiting and conducting research with remaining participants at our four sites (Oxford, Bristol, Cardiff and Reading). Meanwhile, back at HQ, Nick Beale, our project manager, has been ensuring the recruitment and selection process runs smoothly and that participants receive all the necessary information and are in touch with our field researchers. Nick has also spent a considerable amount of time making sure that our cycling and wellbeing trial participants are sufficiently equipped with the necessary skills, bicycle and equipment before embarking on their 8-week pedaling experience.
Initially we set a target of researching, between April 2014 and September 2015, with up to 240 participants aged 50+, spread across our four sites. We are pleased to report that we are fast approaching that number, with 80% of our target sample completing the research tasks and an additional 15% signed-up to participate over the coming weeks. This means that by the end of September 2015 we hope to be at, or near, our target sample. We have made an extra effort to include a variety of people, with different cycling experience, living in different parts of town and country within our target areas.
Fig. 1 cycle BOOM will be using a computer program called Transana (http://www.transana.org) that allows researchers to transcribe and analyse large collections of video, audio, and still image data.
The next phase will be to prepare the data we have gathered for analysis. We have a variety of data types including digitally audio recorded biographical interviews; video from mobile rides; audio/video from post-ride video elicitation interviews; textual data from diaries and numerical data from cognitive tests generated from the cycling and wellbeing trials. The challenge will be, first to prepare the data ready for analysis, and then to apply a robust process of analysis including integration of the different components. By the beginning of this autumn, as daylight hours grow ever shorter and summer fieldwork starts to fade into distant memory, data collection will have ceased and the team will enter a period of immersion, analysis and reflection. We plan to hold a workshop in October where we will flesh out our approach to interrogating our data.
In the meantime, whilst finishing off data collection, we have several conferences coming up in September where members of the team will be presenting our work, including the Royal Geographical Society Annual International Conference and also the Cycling and Society Annual Symposium. We are also developing plans for our next Stakeholder Advisory Group meeting in the autumn.
We’re keeping our heads above water and trying not to become too overwhelmed with conferences and data preparation (not to mention the arrival of new students and the beginning of the next academic year). We hope to emerge from the next few weeks unscathed and are excited about making sense of our data and reporting our findings in the third, and final, year of the cycle BOOM study.
Tim Jones is Principal Investigator on the cycle BOOM research project at Oxford Brookes University. Contact him at tjones@brookes.ac.uk
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