Monday, July 18, 2011
Paulus & Scherff Article
Ok so looking at this a template for our own research I have some questions. Since Scherff was not only doing the research but also part of the data I notice you all went through an elaborate sequence of cataloging and auditing of your own action throughout the process to I assume show the objectiveness of your findings. Since I will be gathering data from subjects I know, is their a script that I should try to follow so I don't taint or contaminate my data and findings? Should I be worried about my objectivity using subjects that I know? Also my subjects know that Im going to record them, did the students know they were being used for data collection? Since my subjects will know when I record them it occurs to me that this could affect the conversation. I understand that their are rules and legal ramifications for secretly recording conversations but isn't it better if the subjects don't know their being recorded? I like the idea of taking it step by step, gathering the data and analyzing it, categorizing it, and letting it dictate what it is that you look at. I think this process will be more instructive for me rather than hypothesizing and then hoping the data confirms my idea. I can see where that can get you into trouble with bending the data to fit your idea rather than the other way around. I also notice you reference others literature in your data analysis. I see the reasoning behind it but is that something I should be working on as well? Should I try to find literature on online gaming research and read up on it before I analyze my data or is it better to be open minded going in and then try to find lit that backs your findings after the fact?
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Fantastic questions - you are really thinking like a researcher! Some of these issues are beyond the scope of what I'm expecting you to do in this class, because you would really need to take an entire research methods class to master the process. Here are a few responses:
ReplyDelete- Our study was a qualitative research study - so we make no claims to objectivity at all. We share all the details of how we collected and analyzed the data so that the reader knows exactly what we did and why, and then they can decide if they think it was a good study or not. In qualitative research there's no such thing as "contaminating" your participants or data - you are part of the study as the researcher and can never separate yourself from it. All you can do is carefully track what you did, how and why, so that your audience (other researchers) know.
- A university's Institutional Review Board (IRB) has to approval studies before they are officially conducted - for this class you are just practicing, so you can't really publish or present your findings outside of class. The IRB requires that you ALWAYS let your participants know that they are participating in a study, and they always have the freedom to drop out of a study at any time. And it's ethical practice to ALWAYS let them know you are recording them, otherwise it is deceptive. Yes, it can change their behavior, but in a full study you would be collecting data over a long period of time and they would eventually get used to being tape recorded.
- Qualitative research suggests that you stay open minded in your data analysis and then reference/go back to other literature at the end to see if any of your findings are consistent with what others have found. We'll talk in class tonight about how to find that literature.
I hope this helps answer some of your questions - feel free to ask further tonight.