You have been recruited by an advertising firm Segue Net Solutions to handle the first phase of a research project, which is part of a contract it has won with The British Council. The British Council (www.britishcouncil.org) is looking to launch an awareness campaign about the risks of travel and the benefits of travel insurance, specifically targeting young people in the age range 18-25 years. The funding for the research is an innovative partnership between the British Council, STA Travel (part of their CSR initiative) and an anonymous donor. The motivation for the anonymous donor is the experience of their child, who was severely injured whilst travelling to attend a British Council event in Bologna. The British Council has an international remit and seeks to reach young people of different nationalities with its awareness campaign.
Segue Net Solutions is a lean outfit and it has provided you with a pilot study of 17 interview transcripts that were conducted on a low budget by a research team of Exeter University Students 2009. Segue Net Solutions has been commissioned to inform the British Council about the subjective perception of overseas travel risks and how these are understood, described and narrated by young people.
Segue Net Solutions would like you to analyse the data to provide as much information as possible in response to the following directives:
- What do young people perceive as the greatest risks associated with overseas travel?
- What level of importance do young people attach to the risks they identify with overseas travel?
- How do young people talk about travel risk?
Segue Net Solutions has requested that you use these three directives to guide your choice of analysis techniques and to structure the main body of your report. They have also requested that you address the following points in your conclusion:
- What recommendations would you make to the British Council for the future development of a travel risk awareness campaign promoting the benefits of travel insurance?
- What are the limitations of the data that you were provided with?
- Recommendations for future qualitative research conducted by Segue Net Solutions for the British Council?
Please provide details of your analysis and justify your arguments. The interview transcripts, along with the interview schedules used by the interviews, are available for download from the ELE module page.
