Last week studying experience was very interesting for
me. As far as I have some experience in qualitative research and I enjoy using
it when I am writing my academic research papers it was very interesting to get
to know about some new methods that I haven't explored in depth.
In our seminar group we have been discussing three
main qualitative methods: interview, focus groups and diary. When we were
editing the wiki-page of the course we realized that the main tricky question
that every researcher should ask yourself (it doesn't matter which method he
uses) is: "Am I sure that these people are really representative of the
society or the target audience you are aiming at."
Especially interesting discussion in our group
was about diary as one of the qualitative research. As far as I have experience
in conducting a survey about students' media consumption habits where they
should have had write a diary I can say that this method I'd really
time-consuming and the results often don't match the reality. People keep
forgetting about adding the information at the time they need to and in the
evening that usually don't remember all the details. And as Stefan fairly
noticed, if the researcher really wants to get good results, he needs to call
and remind people about it all the time and this is very tiresome and
exhausting. We also have been discussing another method - testing or evaluation
(in our case it was the game evaluation), but we were not sure that this is the
pure qualitative method.
During the lecture we discussed what is meant by
qualitative and empirical data, informed opinion, subjective experience and
objective knowledge, the role of time when studying technology and what make a
project become research. Actually, the lecture was more or less explanation of
the paper that we read so it was quite interesting to remember all main points.
Especially I found very interesting in-depth telling about semiotics -the study
of sign. As far as I am writing in my master thesis about Rolan Bart and his
theory of signs it was nice to hear some examples of signifiers and signifieds
in comics and fashion sphere. I was quite surprised with the comparison to the
programming code (because comics depict dynamic activities using a static
representation). But I found not very interesting the discussion of the paper
at the end of class, because in my opinion the questions were kind of tricky
and nobody could come up with the answer.
Hey Mary,
ОтветитьУдалитьI find it interesting that you mentioned the importance of the question ‘Am I sure that these people are really representative of the society or the target audience you are aiming at?’, especially regarding to qualitative methods. On the one side, I can totally agree with you, because a researcher wants to find the right people to get good information for the research. But on the other side, I also have to disagree with the statement, because the interviewees don’t have to be representative all the time. For example, an expert in a specific field serves the purpose to give his opinion on a certain topic and not to represent the society itself. However I have to agree that the experts also have to fit to the topic of the research.
I also just hit on another idea, which is even more provocative: What would you think about the statement: Sometimes you need an interviewee which is not representative to get new point of views and thereby new information? (Regarding to thinking outside the own box) I think this could be an interesting, but of course also controversial approach.
Hey Mary,
ОтветитьУдалитьI find it interesting that you mentioned the importance of the question ‘Am I sure that these people are really representative of the society or the target audience you are aiming at?’, especially regarding to qualitative methods. On the one side, I can totally agree with you, because a researcher wants to find the right people to get good information for the research. But on the other side, I also have to disagree with the statement, because the interviewees don’t have to be representative all the time. For example, an expert in a specific field serves the purpose to give his opinion on a certain topic and not to represent the society itself. However I have to agree that the experts also have to fit to the topic of the research.
I also just hit on another idea, which is even more provocative: What would you think about the statement: Sometimes you need an interviewee which is not representative to get new point of views and thereby new information? (Regarding to thinking outside the own box) I think this could be an interesting, but of course also controversial approach.
Hey!
УдалитьThank you for such an interesting question... Actually, when I was writing about "representative of the society" I didn't mean the absolute majority. I totally agree with you that 'sometimes you need an interviewee which is not representative to get new point of views and thereby new information'. I mean, our society is not uniform - not all thу people have the same opinions, that is way I'm writing about representation)))
"And as Stefan fairly noticed, if the researcher really wants to get good results, he needs to call and remind people about it all the time and this is very tiresome and exhausting."
ОтветитьУдалитьYes, I do believe that this is a fair point to be made. But it's also interesting with a diary because people can really express their inner feelings in a much more private way if that's something you want to investigate. One author that's gained alot from her dairy studies is Sherry Turkle the author of Alone Together, and one of the leading researchers at MIT.
When we did our bachelor thesis we used SMS as a method to remind people to do their diary each day and it was really an efficient reminder. so yes it's tiresome and hard but you can get really good data if you just know what to look for. :)
Yes, I think that this actually also depends on the kind of diary people keep) But the idea with SMS is very nice, thank you for the idea ^__^
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