Theme 6: Reflection

This week's theme was quantitative methods and case studies. During the seminar we discussed different types of quantitative methods, such as interviews and data analysis. Like I said in my earlier post the quantitative method used in my paper was individual interviews with children. We discussed a little bit if you need a different approach while interviewing children vs adults. Before the discussion I separated children and adults and as two totally different groups. I never thought that you might need different approaches while interviewing different adults as well. If I'm about to interview employees at a company I need to have in consideration what kind of position the employees have. A CEO might feel the need to answer questions in a certain way because of the position, and a regular employer maybe hesitate to answer certain question because of eventual consequences. Before each interview it's crucial to prepare the questions to fit each person being interviewed. 

Interviews is always difficult because the purpose of the method is to get as correct and honest answers as possible but it might not always be the case. There can be certain circumstances that affect how people answer to the questions, as job position or private issues. It’s crucial that the person being interviewed feels comfortable to speak their mind and it’s the interviewers responsibility to create a good environment. I have been interviews myself many times in different research projects and I know how different I performed if I felt comfortable or not. If I felt a connection with the person responsible for the interview I thereby felt more trust and answered the questions more honestly. While being interviewed you want to feel that your answers matters and that you are the main focus all the time. It’s not difficult performing interviews but it you prepare carefully the result should be great.

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

PART 1:

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

I have read the article The Relation Between Television Exposure and Theory of Mind Among Preschoolers. The aim of the study was to investigate if the exposure of television affects the results of Theory of Mind (ToM) testing. ToM is a phenomenon that develops during early years and is achieved when the children understand the mental states like thoughts, intentions, desires and emotions. The development of the children reflects their understanding that actions are individual, and that not everyone has the same point of reference as they do.

The qualitative method used in this paper was individual interviews. One trained person interview the 107 children participating in this study, by using a 7-task assessment of ToM. All of the 7 tasks used some kind of visual or pictorial object and the children had to answer questions about a character’s behavior or mental state and also a control question designed in the same way but targeting reality. For example when they tested Diverse beliefs, they showed the child a toy figure, a girl, and drawings of a garage and bushes. The toy girl, they named Linda and the interviewer told the child that Linda was looking for her missing cat and that it was probably in the bushes or the garage. The first question the child had to answer was: “Where do you think the cat is? In the bushes or in the garage?” The child got the response that the answer was good but that Linda believes her cat is in the (opposite place). Then the child had to answer where they think Linda would look for her cat and if the answer was the opposite from the first answer then it was marked as correct. The same types of scenarios were repeated in the six following tasks.

One of the benefits is that the participant being interviewed alone, can’t be influenced by other participants and therefore answer pretty honestly. I can be intimidating being interviewed in a larger group and in individual interviews the participant get all the attention and total focus all the time. One limitation is the time, it takes more time to have individual interviews, than for example, focus groups.

2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?

I learned that you need to be very specific when you are interviewing children since it might be difficult for them to interpret certain questions. The approach is different since it might be hard to have the same time span interviewing children as adults. The interviews in the paper were approximately 15 minutes and afterwards the children received gifts, like a notebook and a pen as a reward. I have never interviewed children so therefore I think this study was interesting.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

I think the main methodological problem was that you had to really make the children understand the tasks they were given. Also it was important not to influence the children in any way, they had to really think for themselves and try to figure out an answer.


PART 2:

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

A case study is a kind of research strategy, which focuses on investigating phenomenon on a deeper level. Often when case studies are being used they include both data collection, like interviews, questionnaires, and observations. There can be different goals to achieve while using case studies, for example to provide a description or test a theory.

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.

I have chosen the paper The Presence of Hyperlinks on Social Network Sites: A Case Study of Cyworld in Korea, which investigates how hyperlinks are being used in social networks (Cyworld in this case) when users are posting comments. Hyperlinks are used to connect users to for example events, political agendas or video links (like YouTube).

The strengths of the paper are that the getting started part is very clear; the scholars state the question/problem in the beginning. Another next step Enfolding Literature is also a strength since they use literature that contradicts their question but use it to build the arguments and make them stronger. The study used one sort of data collection; they developed a software program to query the social network, Cyworld, and therefore gained the comments being made by users. According to Table 1, this is the third step Crafting Instruments and Protocols and should consist of multiple data collection methods. The fact that they used only one method implies a weakness in the study and also the lack of any qualitative study like Table 1 also mentions. These were the major strengths and weaknesses I discovered while reading the paper.


References:

Sams, J. & Park, Woo H. (2013) The Presence of Hyperlinks on Social Network Sites: A Case Study of Cyworld in Korea. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. Online.


Nathanson, Amy I. ; Sharp, Molly L. ; Aladé, F ; Rasmussen, Eric E. ; Christy, K. (2013) The Relation Between Television Exposure and Theory of Mind Among Preschoolers.
Journal of Communication, 2013, Vol.63, pp.1088-1108

Theme 5: Reflection

During the lecture with Haibo Li he talked about how to come up with an idea. A great idea starts with problem solving and an excellent solution. His suggestion was that you first have to define the problem you're about to solve. Without a carefully prepared definition it's difficult to come up with the ideal solution. When you have the definition you have to think of a realistic solution, there may be others that are more creative but if you can't realize them, there might not exist a solution in the end. 

Realistic might sound boring, and sometimes I think it might stop people from realizing ideas and therefore block the creativity. I agree that you have to be somewhat realistic but you also have to think outside the box. An idea could sound crazy in the beginning but when you start breaking it down in smaller pieces it might be realistic, when you have the problem clearly presented in front of you. Li said during his lecture that to come with the best solution you should spend 90% of your effort in defining the problem and the remaining 10% in actually solving the problem. The definition is the foundation which supports the idea. 

Designing for users, demands a realistic approach but also creative, innovative ideas. In the end you have to catch the attention of the users and there's where the creative, crazy ideas make their entrance. So what I really learn during this week's theme was that I have to focus on defining the problem and think realistic but also outside the box, it's not easy but it's doable. If you don't think it through, you will fail.

Theme 5: Design research

ActDresses:

People tend to personalize their technology; stickers and cases are common accessories like Fernaeus and Jacobsson mention in their paper Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. Technical gadgets are a big part of our everyday life end therefore I understand the need to personalize and differ them from others. I’ll guess my iPhone could be comparable to my beloved doll I had as a child. Brought it with me everywhere, spend time dressing it up, fixing the hair, you can call it general maintaining. I maintain my iPhone as well, clean the screen often, buy new cases and change my background pictures to make it more personal and show the world that it’s mine.

In the paper Fernaeus and Jacobsson introduce the concept of actDresses and demonstrate it by a picture. When wearing different accessories the robot acts in different ways. By applying the concept of actDresses, e.g. dressing up robots, you create a connection, a bond, between the robot and the human. I’d guess you could call it humanizing the robot, giving it accessories humans could wear and giving the robot the role of a pet like the scholars mentioned. The focus in the study was using accessories and design influences in the human life and applying it on robots and therefore creating new bonds. If robots are supposed to be a part of our everyday life in the future I think it’s important to make them more human, to blend in, and this kind of research is a good way to start.

Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration:

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?

Since media technologies are supposed to be used by people I think a good way of evaluating is prototypes and user studies. By making a prototype the users can test the product in an authentic environment and give instant feedback that could lead to improvements. The best way to evaluate new technologies is to test them in a user environment, and the type of method depends on what kind of product the test is focused on.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes will play an important part in research since it is a way of describing the results. The prototypes will help future scholars to continue the development since with the help of prototypes you can understand what’s working and not. A prototype is a kind of guideline that will lead the way in the future. The evaluation of the study could increase of you have a prototype since it can be used for testing on actual users and necessary improvements will easily be discovered.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

It could be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype to demonstrate the theories of the study. If you have a prototype that works correctly it could increase the credibility of the research. If you can prove your theories it’s more likely that people will believe them and continue to use them.

Theme 4: Reflection

During this seminar we discussed the advantages and disadvantages with quantitative and qualitative methods and at the end we focused mostly on pros and cons with qualitative.

Olle Bälter had some interest insights regarding the subject on how to create good questionnaires. It’s not a simple task but with the right knowledge and probably the right experience the results can end up pretty satisfying.

We had group discussions regarding pros and cons with web vs. paper questionnaires and it gave me some insight I didn’t have before. When creating a web questionnaire you have to test it on different web browsers before sending it to the users and therefore avoiding potential technical issues regarding compatibility. I have also encountered these issues while participating in web surveys and it affects the number of users that can participate. Also I learn that you are more likely to receive a greater amount of answers if you choose to send out paper questionnaires instead of using online methods. We discussed this in groups as well and came up with that one of the reasons you receive more answers with paper questionnaires is that it exudes more credibility. One other reason can be that when you receive it directly to your home, in your hand, you don’t forget about it as easily as an email in your inbox.

After the seminar I thought about different surveys I have answered and reflected if I had come across any mistakes made by the creators of the surveys and one particular survey came to mind. I recently participated in a study concerning a pharmaceutical and it included answering questions regarded my personal life, how I felt about myself on others etc. One particular part of the survey focused on questions regarding my partner and myself. The problem was that I didn’t have a partner and there were nowhere possible for me to choose an alternative saying I was single. I had to answer the question so I filled in the alternative “Not true”, on almost all these questions since I couldn’t answer questions about a partner I didn’t have. At the beginning of the study those responsible knew I didn’t have a partner but they said it didn’t partner. The problem is now that the statistics regarding my results will be incorrect since I couldn’t answer some of the questions correctly. At the bottom line, it’s important to consider many possible scenarios before creating a questionnaire, so problems like this won’t occur.

Theme 4: Quantitative research

The article I read was Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage by Tracii Ryan and Sophia Xenos. The aim of the study was to investigate if there is a difference between Facebook users and nonusers considering specific characteristics. The characteristics was The Big Five (extraversion, agree-ableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience), narcissism, shyness and loneliness.

Reference: Xenos, Sophia. and Ryan, Tracii. Who uses Facebook? An investigation into the relationship between the Big Five, shyness, narcissism, loneliness, and Facebook usage. Computers in Human Behavior Volume 27, issue 5. (2011): 1658–1664

 

  

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

In the study they used a questionnaire and in total 1635 self-selected Internet users between the ages of 18 and 44 were chosen to answer the 124 questions. Out of these people there were 311 users who failed to complete the online questionnaire and therefore their information was removed from the study.

Limitation: hard to get deeper understanding of the users since it’s only a questionnaire, it’s difficult to follow up. There were quite a few people who failed to answer and that is another issue. Problems might appear in questionnaires if the users misunderstand questions or maybe answers in a way they think it’s correct.

Benefits: It’s an easy way to collect a large amount of data in a short time period. You can specify quite well what kind of answers you like and it’s easy to reach a lot of people in a larger geographical area than, for example, interviews. 

2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

 I realized how difficult it could be to create a good questionnaire. Like I said earlier there were over 300 users who, for some reason, didn’t answer the questions correctly and it could be due to poorly written questions. You have to really think every question through so there are no misunderstandings and it’s easy to follow, especially if you have more than 100 questions like the scholars had in this study.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

The main problem of the study, and as the scholars mention in the discussion, is the approach they used to recruit participants for the questionnaire. Both Facebook users and nonusers were recruited through advertisement placed on six big Australian online discussion forums. Besides the ad in the forums they also posted an ad on Facebook with the aim to recruit Facebook users. Out of all the users answering the questionnaire, mainly of them were Facebook users. To get a more even distribution of Facebook users and nonusers the scholars should have used other methods to recruit users. I mean since the scholars wanted nonusers, the Internet might not be the ideal place to look. Instead “an analogue” method, like advertisement on message boards or in newspapers could have helped to recruit more nonusers since they might not use social media on the Internet as frequently. If the scholars had chosen another recruitment method they might have found more nonusers and thereby got a more even result.

About the paper by Olle Bälter and colleagues:

After reading the paper I learned that high psychical activity could decrease the risk of URTI (Upper Respiratory Tract Infection). The scholars in this study also used questionnaires, which they sent out by traditional mail to potential participants in Sweden. I found it interesting that their study showed a relation between highly stressed men and high psychical activity and that this relation could decrease URTI but the result wasn’t as clear with women. 

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

The benefits of using quantitative methods are, as I explained in the answers above, that it’s an effective way of collecting a large amount of data. It’s not as time consuming as interviews and it’s easy to keep statistics when you have certain questions with certain alternatives. The limitations are that misunderstanding might appear if the participants don’t understand how to correctly answer a question and this could lead to misleading answers. 

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

The benefits of using qualitative methods, like interviews, are that you easily can explain of some question are unclear. You can follow up an answer and try to get a deeper understanding that might be more difficult by using quantitative methods. The limitations are the time and the number of participants. It takes more time to conduct interviews and it’s difficult to get a large amount of participants.

Theme 3: Reflection

When I read the papers and participated in the discussions during the seminar I realized how wide theory is as a notion.  Theory is used in so many contexts and therefore it gets quite confusing what the definition really is. When you need to explain how to objects are related, a theory/theories is a way of understanding it. How different situations occur can also be explained by some kind of theory. Much of the knowledge we get during our education is based on theory, ancient or modern.

When we read the text explaining, “What is theory?” during the seminar I got hung up on a few sentences. They were saying that if a majority of experts in a certain field, test and accept a theory it can be regarded as true. It sounds reasonable but does it really work in reality? I saw a documentary about the Swedish ex-series killer Thomas Quick earlier this week and it made me think about the definition on how we can be sure that theories a really true. The documentary showed that certain therapy methods used on patients, based on the theories of a certain therapist, turned out to be completely wrong. The therapist was liked by many of the psychologists working at the clinic where Quick was treated; she was a mentor for them. Her methods were used to receive certain information from Quick for resolving unresolved murders and in the end Quick was charged with these murders since he confessed. The methods used were based on theories that contradicted other research in that field during the same time. This happened in the 90’s and this year Quick was cleared of the last murder, he was innocent of all the murder charges. Now, the psychologists using those methods back in the 90’s confessed that the theories behind it was completely wrong, there was no truth in it. This event really made me rethink on the way I believe theory to be true. These psychologists believed it was true, and since they were experts in that field, they convinced others to believe it. So even if experts say that a theory is true, I believe it’s always important to investigate in contradicting research to make a good decision. A belief in certain theories can sometimes have devastating consequences.