FIELD WORK DISCUSSION

METHODOLOGYQualitative – observations

Village Yarn and Tea Shop Gifted Hands Yarn Garden Church of the Holy Stitch Hearts and Hands

Quantitative – survey 16 respondents

Observations I am going to add a slide here describing the

number of knitters observed, number of observations, and describing the settings of the observations. I am just waiting to get an email back from someone.

I would love any pictures you may have taken to go on this slide.

OBSERVATION RESULTS

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Yarn GardenVillage Yarn and Tea ShopChurch of the Holy StitchHearts and HandsGifted Hands

MAJOR FINDINGS

•UPON REALIZING AN INFORMATION NEED, KNITTERS OVERWHELMINGLY (69%) CHOOSE TO SEEK HELP FROM FRIENDS, RELATIVES, OR OTHER NON-PROFESSIONAL KNITTERS.

•OTHER WAYS TO SEEK KNITTING INFORMATION MENTIONED:• YOUTUBE “HOW TO” VIDEOS• RAVELRY.COM• GOOGLE SEARCHES• FACEBOOK “FRIEND” ADVICE• PATTERN BOOKS OR MAGAZINES• LIBRARY/BOOKSTORE/AMAZON.COM RESOURCES• EMAIL LISTS AND BULLETINS

•ESPECIALLY INTERESTING WHEN YOU CONSIDER ALL OF THE ABOVE SUGGESTIONS CAME, FIRST, FROM A FRIEND, RELATIVE, OR NON-PROFESSIONAL KNITTER.

Anomalies & Areas for Further Study

•Surprisingly, the WA Women’s Correctional Facility knitting group, Hearts and Hands, did not fit Chatman’s small world as expected.

• The inmates seemed to overcome information poverty. They were openly seeking advice about knitting and aspects of their lives inside and outside the prison.

• They were trusting and friendly with the volunteers who ran the knitting group. Didn’t feel like they had “outsider” or, “us” and “them” issues despite geospaciallity.

• They happily gave others in their social network advice about prison rehabilitation programs and, above all, knitting.

• They did have a limited number of roles and shared a common life situation.

Survey Results•Questionnaire was administered in person or online to 16 volunteers.• 10 multiple choice questions were asked.• 2 open-ended questions were asked.• 11 statements were evaluated by participants using a 5-point

Likert-type scale.• Totaling 23 questions

•Respondents were 87% female and 12.5% male.

•62.5% of those polled were between the ages of 30 and 39. No participants were between the ages of 50-60.

Respondent Age

18-2930-3940-4970+

Participants Described Themselves As:

ParentRetiredPaid WorkerUnemployedStudent

Paid workers described their professions as:•Farmer•Computer programmer•Educators•Healthcare professionals•Library professionals•Office manager•Business owner•Marine biologist

Preferred Knitting Information Sources

YouTube raverly.compattern maga-zines/books

library resources

Google search emailFaceBook Other knitters

Findings

•When asked where they prefer to get crafting information from, 75% of participants responded that they prefer to search for information “in

person from people I know (non-yarn crafting professionals).” 68% like crafting information from online websites.

I prefer to get crafting information from: books

magazineshard copy patternsonline websitesonline forumsonline blogs or wikisonline patternsonline videospodcastsin person from knitting pro-fessionalsin person from non-pro-fessionals

Further Findings…

•When asked if they prefer to craft alone or in groups, 75% of respondents like to do both. 56.25% say they have met with a group more than once, but not regularly.

•56% of yarn crafters share information about knitting with other crafters more than once a month.

•43.75% of those polled said that professional knitting resources are not the most helpful.

The Best Knitting Resources are… The easiest to

find

The quickest

The most trusted and accurate

An Interesting Finding•62.5% of knitters are sometimes willing to pay for knitting information. This supports their earlier claim that the best resources are trusted and accurate (56.25%). Furthermore 68% prefer online resources and 37.5% always go the internet first when they need help solving a problem.

•However, the numbers show that half of knitters (50%) make use of more than one resource when solving an information need. Based on the fact that 75% prefer to ask other knitters for help solving an information need, and 50% reported they nearly always ask others for help, we may conclude that:

•There is a fairly even split between use of online resources to fulfill an information need and in-person resources to fill an information need.

Points for Discussion1. Observations took place in a number of settings and groups.

Compare and contrast the finding of different observation settings? 2. Do you think the knitting group we observed in the WA Correctional

Facility for Women fit into Chatman’s Small World?

3. If 75% of knitters prefer to get information in-person from friends, and 68% prefer information from on-line websites, what does that suggest about the nature of preferred information? Do yarn crafters prefer formal or informal information? Do they prefer quick, accurate and trusted, or easily accessible information?

4. Do you think the questionnaire reflected results that support our observations? If yes, then how so?

5. Do you think the age demographic (nearly all questionnaire respondents under the age of 50) has anything to do with our knitters preferring both online and in-person resources? Do you think anything will change as older generations disappear?