Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Response to Tonight's Reading
There were a couple of interesting comments in Sun's article for tonight and I would like some clarification if possible. She discusses her case study approach to gathering information and discusses how she examined the patterns. She says, "cases with interesting patterns of use were selected to bear futher exploration using methods of qualitative interviewing..." How did she determine the "interesting patterns." Is this a case of researcher bias? And, if not, then how did she ensure that she didn't unknowingly bias the study based upon her own personal interests? The second comment I found interesting was: "Particpants were offered payment for their work based on the local hourly rate.: I did not know that researchers were allowed to pay for research. Did this present a bias as well? How could she ensure she got an accurate sample of participants. Upon finishing reading the methods chapter, I did notice that she took a lot of time to explain how she tried to recruit other types of people beyond the college age and that it was rather difficult. It doesn't seem that an hourly rate would be enough of an incentive to get young professionals to participate. How would a researcher reach an older group that did not feel like volunteering their time and energy? I can see why there would be hesitation here on the participants part. How does the researcher bypass this?
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3 comments:
As far as I know, it is acceptable to offer some sort of compensation to participants in studies. I would guess that most young professionals did not have time to log each text message they received throughout the day. Making the time commitment of being involved in this research "attractive" to those out of college would be very difficult.
As far as attracting other participants, she may have been able to work with supervisors on encouraging involvement of employees in the project. I know when my supervisor requests that I participate in a survey, I usually do. However, the time commitment linked with this study would be asking a lot more from an employee than just completing a simple survey.
I don't have a problem with "bribing" the participants, but I shared your concern about the "interesting" cases. That could have a really wide range of meanings, and I'd have liked to know a bit more about it. She certainly went into lots of detail on the rest of her work, so a little explanation here might have been helpful, too.
That's why some people have a hard time with qualitative inquiry: because ultimately, it's the researcher interpreting what he or she sees.
The best thing a qualitative researcher can do is to situate herself within a theoretical tradition, then be consistent with using that theoretical framework as he/she analyzes data.
But think about your experience as a teacher--don't you see "interesting" patterns that later inform your revision of activities/assignments? Would you call your assessment and susbsequent revision "biased"?
I do think it's important for qualitative researchers to understand where they might be biased. And it's also important to locate yourself w/in a theoretical tradition. But you can't let the fear of being "biased" stop you from trying to see patterns that form in your analysis.
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