I chose the research paper “US
teenagers’ perceptions and awareness of digital technology: a focus group
approach” by Heather L. Hundley and
Leonard Shyles from the journal “New Media
& Society” (IF=1.394).
In my opinion in this paper authors are
perfectly applying one of the main qualitative methods – focus group. Focus
groups is one of the forms of qualitative research when certain group of people (it's better when it represents the target audience) is asked
about their ideas,
opinions,
concerns, perceptions, beliefs, relationships or attitudes to some services, products, ideas etc. The group represents an interactive group where all the participants are free to talk to other members and discuss some points. This article is a research on how teenagers are using digital
media devices. The researchers were conducting focus groups with 80 middle- and high-school
teenagers (there were provided 2 geographical regions for interesting
regional comparisons - the eastern and western USA) [1]. The main purpose of this study is to get to know what adolescents are thinking about different kinds of digital devices - such as mobile
phones, video game systems, the internet etc. and to realize which the
functions they play in the daily life. There have been developed four main themes from 11 focus group interviews: "(1) an
awareness of digital devices; (2) a sense of temporal displacement; (3) social
functions; and (4) a palpable sense of risk associated with using them" [1].
According to the researchers and my surprise the use of focus
groups was decided to be appropriate for the ages of the participants. But in my opinion the limitations of this method is much deeper than advantages - because in focus group participants are supposed to discuss together and express opinions. But in this age people are shy and not ready to show their real attitude to some issues, or they just wanna brag in front of mates. Also the issue with strong opinion leader who could convince everyone in his point of view could affect the results.The findings are not broad and general but thay are more focused
and specific. But I think, despite these small limitations, this approach
is one of the best for such kind of study. But what I suggest the researchers for the
future study is to complement the paper with quantitative methods in order to
get more objective results.
Concerning the paper “Comics, Robots, Fashion
and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses” by Fernaeus, Y. &
Jacobsson, M., I found it quite interesting, but for me
some points were pretty much difficult to grasp (only when I reached the part
with examples I really understood everything). The researchers are making a
short overview of approaches to physical programming and focusing on the concept
of actDresses (that was inspired by comic sign system and practices of clothing
and accessorising) and supporting it by three example scenarios of how the concept
can be used for controlling, programming, and predicting the behavior of
robotic systems (e.g. using physical clothing, labels, and accessories for
controlling physically embodied systems). My favorite scenario is the first one
which is designed for the Pleo robot dinosaur.
Seminar question: In your opinion, is mixed
research better than using separately qualitative and quantitative?
References:
[1] “US teenagers’ perceptions and awareness of digital technology: a focus group approach” by Heather L. Hundley and Leonard Shyles from the journal “New Media & Society”
It was very interesting to read about this large-scale focus group study. Often focus groups are used to complement other research methods, such as surveys. It is interesting to note how focus groups have become much more common in recent years.
ОтветитьУдалитьOne commonly mentioned challenge with focus groups is the problem of "groupthink", i.e. that one "strong" individual influences the group. However, with 11 groups this is not a problem… Many studies include quite few groups…
Did the authors elaborate on how the teenagers were grouped in the 11 groups? Sometimes researchers draw on the characteristics of the participant to create different, complementing (=heterogeneous) groups but sometimes researchers prefer creating "similar" (=homogeneous) groups. How the participants are grouped is a very important part of focus group research.
Stefan, thanks for your comment!
УдалитьActually, your question is very interesting - I also paid attention to that when I read the paper. They are nor writing exactly HOW they divided all the teens into groups, but I found it very interesting that they tried to choose respondents not only from different coasts, but also cultures: "On the West coast, teens from a high school in a predominantly Hispanic area in southern California participated, consisting of 75 percent Latino, 14.5 percent black, 7.3 percent white, 3.1 percent Asian and .1 percent Native American. On the East coast, teens from a middle school participated, consisting of a predominantly white (66.2%) population followed by black students (28.5%), Latino students (3.8%), and lastly, Asian students (1.5%)"