Research%20process

1
Research process

• Finding out about people

2
Four key issues

• Setting goals
• Decide how to analyze data once collected
• Relationship with participants
• Clear and professional
• Informed consent when appropriate
• Triangulation
• Use more than one approach
• Pilot studies
• Small trial of main study

3
Nature of Investigative Work

• Be clear what you are after
• People
• Context
• Activities
• Technology constraints
• Inspiration or information?
• Are you looking for inspiration to create
  something new
• Are you looking for information because you are
  extending/improving an existing product or
  service?

4
Who to Watch?

• Relevance of scientific sampling?
• Purposeful sampling
• Possibles participants (Millen, 2000)
• Field guides
• Liminals
• Corporate informants
• Exceptional informants

5
Ethics

• Treat your participants justly do as you would
  be done by!

• Fully informed participation
• Informed consent
• Explain risks and benefits of the study
• Respect privacy
• Pay subjects for their time( can be or
  something valuable)
• If asked, provide data and research results to
  subjects

6
Ethics

• Scenario
• Youve been asked to study impact of mobile
  e-mail system. Youll report to senior
  management.
• What are the ethical issues?
• How would you deal with them?

7
Top Techniques for Understanding People

• Carry out field studies
• Find ways for participants to self-report
• Carry out follow-up interviews
• Use creatively engaging techniques
• Analyse and distill findings

8
Data recording

• Notes, audio, video, photographs
• ----------------------------
• Notes plus photographs
• Audio plus photographs
• Video

9
Equipment considerations
Criteria Notes Camera Audio camera Video
Equipment Pen, paper and camera easily available Inexpensive hand held recorder with good microphone More expensive, editing and analysis equipment needed
Flexibility of use Very flexible unobtrusive Flexible, relatively unobtrusive Needs positioning and focusing lens bulky
Completeness of data Only gets what note taker thinks is important and can record in time available inexperience problems Can obtain complete audio recording visual data missing. Notes sketches, photos can augment data Most complete method of data collecting especially if more than one camera used
Disturbance to users Very low Low but audio must be changed and microphone positioned Can be very obtrusive, Hawthorne effect
Data reliability Possibly low- relies on humans making a good record knowing what to record High but external noise can muffle voices Can be high depends on what camera focused on
Analysis Easy to transcribe rich descriptions produced data transcribing onerous Critical discussions can be identified. Transcriptions required for analysis. Original record can be revisited Critical incidents idd and tagged. Automated support needed for detailed analysis Permanent record