DM2572 - But, like, why is it?

Friday, October 9, 2015

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

The assignment for this week was to chose a research article which uses qualitative methods, something that was easier said than done since it would seem like quantitative methods are more popular for some reason. Anyways, after some googling I found “A Qualitative Examination of the Impact of Social Media on Media Relations Practice“ by Dustin W. Supa, which analyses how social media has affected the relationship between journalists and PR-professionals.

In order to do this, the author has chosen to conduct semi-structured interviews with people from both professions. He mentions that there has been quantitative research about this before, but that the aim of this paper is to get a better understanding and fill in some gaps, which it actually manages to do it would seem. The results were that the PR-people thought that social media aided in establishing better relationships with the journalists, which leads to more trust and, ultimately, better business. What this particular research also noticed was that the journalists did not agree fully, as the majority thought that the rise of social media hadn’t really changed much of the relationship. One journalist stated that “it’s another medium they [the PR-people] use to bug me” (Supa p.6), which I think is hilarious.

After having read the article, I would say that qualitative methods really are good to use, as it did give more detailed information about the subject which had not been brought up before. As was discussed last week, the disadvantage of quantitative research is that the answers are limited to the questions, which may result in lost additional information or incorrect generalization. By conducting interviews and asking follow-up questions, things like this can be prevented. The limitation with using qualitative methods is that the interviewer has to be skilled enough to conduct them correctly, and not affect the results with personal opinions which might sometimes be difficult.

A negative aspect with the paper was that the author does not mention what questions were asked, just what general questions he wanted answers to. It would have been nice to have more samples of what was being said, in an appendix for example, as it now becomes difficult to judge how the research could have been done differently. Apart from that, the samples were diverse and chosen with care, which was good.

..............

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

According to Eisenhardt, a case study is a “research strategy which focuses on understanding the dynamics present within single settings” (Eisenhardt p.534). In other words, someone who does a case study investigate situations, or cases, and how the participants behave and interact. These cases often include a problem or dilemma which the participants have to solve or discuss in some way (Eberly Center). One could probably compare this to roleplaying games in some cases, for example “Cluedo” where the players are facing various situations, which the players have to act upon. The researching methods within a case study can be both quantitative or qualitative, include interviews and/or simply observations (Eisenhardt p.534).

2. Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

My chosen article was “Technology, Pedagogy and Digital Production: A Case Study of Children Learning New Media Skills” by Rebekah Willett. This was a case study conducted during a game making course for 9-13 year old children in Great Britain, where the author was present during all sessions and gathered data through observation, recordings, and by analyzing the products being made. At the end of the course, individual interviews were conducted in order to clarify and complement the data. The aim of the research was to investigate how digital media and an informal setting influences the learning process, which is an interesting and relevant topic seeing as more and more schools are adopting this way of learning.

When reading this article, the advantages of doing a case study for this kind of research become evident. For example, by observing the children the author noticed that older children understood things quicker, and could also remember things better as they had a more sophisticated general understanding of the software. This is something that is difficult to discover by doing ordinary research methods, especially among children who might not be as good at self-reflecting.

After having studied the points in Eisenhardt’s article, I would say that Willett’s case study has many strengths - she uses different research methods within the study, analyses all factors thoroughly and makes comparisons between the relationships. One disadvantage could be that the author conducted this case study alone, whereas it might have been good to have different input from another researcher. Furthermore, the software used for the study wasn’t chosen with the research in mind, and therefore obviously affected the results. However, it was still a good way to investigate how children used this kind of software which could also benefit the research of user friendliness.

Sources

Supa, D.W. (2014). A Qualitative Examination of the Impact of Social Media on Media Relations Practice. Public Relations Journal, 8(2). Available online: http://www.prsa.org/intelligence/prjournal/documents/2014supa.pdf

Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Building Theories from Case Study Research. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 532-550.

Willett, Rebekah (2007) Technology, Pedagogy and Digital Production: A Case Study of Children Learning New Media Skills. Learning, Media and Technology, 32. pp. 167-181. ISSN 1743-9884.
Available online: http://eprints.ioe.ac.uk/227/1/Willett2007Technology167_%282%29.pdf

Eberly Center. Case Studies.
https://www.cmu.edu/teaching/designteach/teach/instructionalstrategies/casestudies.html

Sunday, October 4, 2015

Theme 3 Comments

1. http://stinazwahlen.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-post-reflection.html?showComment=1443791964713

2. http://dm2572elvira.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-post-seminar.html?showComment=1443796328683

3. http://dm2572lisa.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-refection-post.html?showComment=1443954113996

4. http://dm2572rberggre.blogspot.se/2015/09/this-theme-was-about-understanding.html?showComment=1443955042132

5. http://amlinden.blogspot.se/2015/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1443957994594

Theme 4 - Reflection

This week’s theme was all about quantitative research, which we investigated by reading articles that used these methods in different ways. First off, defining what quantitative research is was a little more complex than I’ve always thought (as with most terms discussed so far in this course, so nothing new there), even though it’s generally simple to actually recognize when the method is used. The definition that was agreed upon was that it’s a method where the acquired data can be calculated on in order to find correlations among a group of subjects. It often includes numbers, as in how many has this or that opinion, how many percent, how often etc. I also added that it can be used to generalize something relatively fast.

During the seminar we had a relatively heated discussion about what was best, quantitative or qualitative research. I argued that it was best to combine both, for example to begin with quantitative methods in order to gather lots of general data, and then use qualitative methods to selectively gather more details. This opinion was somewhat questioned as it would count as two different researches, so it’s not really a combination, but I stand firm on that opinion. Furthermore, we also discovered that a quantitative approach was more popular among us because it’s a very “engineery” approach, where easy answers to easy questions is often desired (it even had a term - “scientism”!). Qualitative research leans more towards the social science spectra, where it’s interesting to discover more about how people think psychologically.

Then we were introduced to the term “wicked problem”, which is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete or contradictory data, or when too many variables influence the answers. This is something that might arise when using quantitative methods, so one has to be careful when setting up the research. For example, it would be a bad idea to ask “How would you go about designing a smartphone?” in a quantitative way, since there are a lot of answers to this question, which would make it difficult to calculate the data.

To summarize; I think this theme was interesting, but no new groundbreaking knowledge was acquired, as we have come upon quantitative research many times before. However, I haven’t discussed it as critically as we did now, and it was interesting to see how other people saw it. Reading the articles was a great way to see how quantitative research can be conducted in different ways, which is definitely something to remember for future references.

Thursday, October 1, 2015

Theme 5: Design research

Part 1

This week we are looking into design research, something that I think was demonstrated quite well in the article “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration” by Shafiq ur Réhman, Jiong Sun, Li Liu, and Haibo Li. Here the authors aim to create an alternative way of watching football/soccer on a mobile phone, where the phone’s vibrations are used to make the game feel more vivid and exciting. In order to create such a game, the authors decided to conduct a quantitative research and make a prototype which would be tested by students and teachers at Umeå University.

There are many benefits in using a prototype in the researching process. If the goal is to create a product or application of some sort, it makes it cheaper if a simpler version is thoroughly tested before releasing the actual product to the public, which without the first step could be both faulty and expensive. Nowadays, many products are really user-oriented, and with social media all users become potential and powerful critics. If a new operating system or game is full of bugs when released, everybody will know about it very soon. Thus, testing using the actual consumers before hand is almost necessary in some cases, I would say. Furthermore, there are many aspects within technology that needs to feel right. As for this research, it was a question about how strong the vibrations should be, how to behave and when to be triggered. Things that are difficult to know beforehand. Another role of prototypes could be that it’s a good way to learn how the test subjects behave in general, which could be used in other research fields.

The fact that the prototypes are often simpler and cheaper could also act as a limitation, as they don’t work exactly as the end product. In the article, the product would use automatic video analysis to trigger the vibrations, and react to cues like which team has the ball, when it’s kicked and when someone shoots for goal. Some really complex coding had to be done here, but to solve it in a simpler and faster way, the researchers used manually controlled vibrations instead.

Part 2

In the paper “Finding Design Qualities in a Tangible Programming Space” by Ylva Fernaeus & Jakob Tholander, it is investigated on how to combine digital and physical interaction. Here, the empirical data was the testing through experience, where children got to try out the system and interact with physical objects and see how they corresponded to the things on screen.

The second article, “Differentiated Driving Range: Exploring a Solution to the Problems with the “Guess-O-Meter” in Electric Cars” by Anders Lundström, doesn’t focus as much on prototyping and testing, but is a doing research based on design nevertheless. Here the author writes about the energy display in electric cars, and how it isn’t perfect in telling how far the car can get with the remaining electrical charge. In order to design a better display, Lundström not only interviews drivers of electrical cars, but also test drives a number of different models himself, which would be the empirical data in this case.

Whether practical design work can be considered a 'knowledge contribution’, I’d say that it certainly can. It would probably fall under the a posteriori knowledge category, as it’s about gaining knowledge through experience which Lundströms research is a perfect example of. Many people learn by doing, and in some research it’s even necessary to be practical and not only theoretical, as in the Tangible Programming article where the results would be far more inconclusive if just analysing how the computer system works.

About the differences between research oriented design and other types of design works, I'd say that the first one is designed to aid the research and prove theories, while the other is often created to accomplish things by itself. For example, the Tangible Programming system was created to research how the children behaved when experiencing multi-media interaction, but a real programming platform is used as it is and not necessarily to study the users.

When it comes to differences with design driven research compared to other research practices, let’s say the quantitative research methods we were discussing in the previous theme, the main difference would probably be that the sooner is more user-oriented and practical. That is, that the research is done in a posteriori, to actively participate with the ambition to create something new. The latter is done by analyzing data in order to gain knowledge about something that already is.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

Theme 3 Reflection

This week we got to investigate the wonderful and complex world of theories, and also choose research articles to read which was a good practice for future paper writing (I have not done the bachelor thesis yet, and in that sense I think this course is an excellent preparation).

Compared to the previous themes, I’d say that this theme was not as philosophical and abstract, which of course was reflected in the seminar discussions. Here we instead tried to define the term ‘theory’, which I’ve always thought was the same as ‘hypothesis’. Actually, ‘theory’ as an everyday term is rarely used correctly in either Swedish nor English, as it is often correspondent to “I think…”. Our conclusion was that a theory explains why something is in a way that is as simple as possible (preferably at least).

We also discussed what makes a theory strong or weak, which none of us was completely sure of at first. So basically, an example of a weak theory could be that when you’re at a beach and eat ice-cream, you’ll get attacked by sharks (the theory being that you get attacked by sharks because you have eaten ice-cream). This is just based on a correlation, and not even applicable everywhere which it indirectly states. However, it is still a theory, since nothing says that a theory must be “true”. Another thing about theories is that they should be “testable”, and that one shouldn’t be afraid to question them.

As for the articles, I chose one with a psychological theme about media addiction, and what factors cause people to become dependent on internet and television. Here the authors didn’t have any theories of their own, but instead used two external theories and put them up against each other. We talked about if this was an okay strategy, and came to the conclusion that it actually was. In a way, most theories are based on others that came before them, and revising them is necessary if we want to advance. I was thinking about the new type of magnesium carbonate with super absorption-powers that was discovered by scientists at Uppsala University. For over one hundred years, scientists had written articles explaining that it was impossible to create this substance. After many failed attempts, the Uppsala scientists accidentally managed to create it after having left the test beaker over the weekend, proving all previous theories wrong. This is just one of many examples which prove the importance of questioning earlier belief.

Source

http://swednanotech.com/2013/07/uppsalaforskare-upptacker-nytt-material/

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Theme 2 Comments

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Theme 4: Quantitative research

1. Article: “Internet and Social Media Use as a Resource Among Homeless Youth”
Eric Rice, Anamika Barman-Adhikari (2013)Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jcc4.12038/epdf

For this week I chose the article “Internet and Social Media Use as a Resource Among Homeless Youth” by Eric Rice and Anamika Barman-Adhikari. Here the authors have chosen a quantitative method to study how young homeless people between the ages 13-24 use internet in terms of communication, job application and house searching. The research includes 194 participants, all randomly recruited from a drop-in agency for homeless, who got to answer a survey consisting of various questions about their internet habits. The benefits of conducting a research like this could be that it generates data from many subjects in a short amount of time. Also, with a sufficient number and diversity of samples, it is possible to generalize which the authors seem to be aiming for.

The limitations with using a survey is that the participants may not be entirely truthful with the answers, especially when it’s a multiple-choice questionnaire which leaves little room for developed answers. As I understood it, there weren’t any options where the participants could evaluate themselves, which I think is a major error. This could be used as an alternative to personal interviews, which the authors stated were not possible since the youth’s were difficult to contact because of their living conditions. Furthermore, it would have been interesting to see if the results would differ depending on different regions, as opposed to just Hollywood where the research was conducted, but that’s just a personal opinion.

All in all, I found the research interesting and well thought through. The data was structured, where the authors have taken into account everything from ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and different kinds of living situations, since homelessness can be considered a diffuse term. The participants also received one 20$ gift card each for their cooperation, which was very thoughtful.

2. Article: “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play”
Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom and Mel Slater
https://www.kth.se/social/files/56000bc9f2765448c25c5279/Drumming%20in%20Immersive%20Virtual%20Reality.pdf

In the article “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play” by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom and Mel Slater, it is discussed how body ownership illusions affects our behaviour. The research was done by letting 36 students play drums while wearing a head-mounted display and a motion capture suit, which created a virtual world with an avatar mimicking the movements of the real life player. The students were divided into two groups where each participant in one group got to play as a dark skinned, casually dressed male, while the other group was represented by a light skinned, formally dressed male.

The results were that the participants in the second group tended to “feel more expressive” than normal while playing the drums, as it matches the stereotype. As for the type of research, I would guess that it leans towards quantitative, as the test subjects were not handpicked, but recruited from a university campus. Furthermore, the research was done in a structured manner with a demonstration, the actual experiment followed by a questionnaire. Finally, the results were used as statistics based on all individual results, which is also typical for a quantitative method.

3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

As mentioned before, the benefits of using quantitative methods could be that with sufficient randomly picked samples, it is easier to generalize somewhat accurate in a shorter amount of time. This could also be something negative, but I think it all depends on the kind of research you’re doing. Another benefit is that by doing surveys, it could allow people to be anonymous and therefore answer otherwise uncomfortable questions.

4. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

The benefits of using qualitative methods are that it allows you to be more deep and thorough in the research, as only a couple of handpicked subjects are chosen for a personal interview or an experiment. The limitations are that the results might not be applicable to a larger population.

The conclusion I draw from reading both articles and thinking about pros and cons with both quantitative and qualitative research, is that it’s probably best to mix the two. That is, to use quantitative methods to gather data and statistics in order to get a broad perspective, and to use qualitative methods to get more details.