fredag 13 december 2013

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

I have read the paper “Adopt, adapt, abandon: Understanding why some young adults start, and then stop, using instant messaging”, where adoption, adaption and abandoned use are examined of Instant messaging by former users.

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

The qualitative method used in this paper was inductive qualitative technique, also described in grounded theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). In this approach you use the data to build theory, by examine concrete events and from these data attempt to identify larger categories and to understand them. The direction of reasoning is often thought of as “bottom up”, from data to theory (Eben A. Weitzman, 1997). The inductive qualitative technique was used to analyze interview data collected from 21 participants from a semi-structured interview.
A benefit with this method is that it’s an excellent way to provide framework, for unearthing unknown or unexpected phenomena. A limitation connected to this benefit is that it’s hard to follow a plan, which can have an impact of the conducted timespan. Another benefit is great awareness of the perspectives of participants.

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

The interview questions was refined and evolved in an iterative process between the first 4 interviews. I find this as a benefit to be able to see flaws and be able to fix them. At the same time this may have resulted in different starting points and affected the outcome. Which should have been fixed with earlier pilot testing. Which is something I will avoid when performing interview testing. But overall, the entire method is an evolving process, and finds unexpected answers.

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

First of all, the first 4 participants that performed the study were counted to the end results even tough the test was modified between them. It’s not legit to create a conclusion of participant data if they had different settings. Otherwise I think the method was good, the use of WEFT Qualitative Data Analysis tool to transcribe responses was a benefit to obtain quantity of data. Which made it easy to code the data according to the themes observed in the initial analysis. Which strengthened the benefit of qualitative methods to find new themes whuch were added to the coding scheme as necessary.

Case study
A case study is a descriptive, exploratory or explanatory analysis of a person, group or event. Case studies are used to explore relations of underlying principles to create an analytic frame within the case to illuminate or explicate.

The second paper selected for comparison with "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" is “Mobile phones during work and non-work time: A case study of mobile, non-managerial workers”. It is a case study, which examines how some non-managerial/professional workers (mobile service engineers) used mobile phones for work, with a central focus on phone use during working hours. Where findings addresses management of the work/non-work boundary during work hours.

First off the paper had a good argumentation and presentation about the area of blurred lines between work/non-work related communications during work hours. Referring to other similar studies about affects from off-work, work load which is a strength comparing to table 1. The study had a specified selection of 3 engineering companies with a total of 17 participants. Specifically chosen for sampling, which also follows table 1. Data was collected during a semi-structured interview with recording tool, which later were transcribed. According to table 1 there should be multiple data collection methods to strengthen grounding of theory by triangulation of evidence. I feel this point is fulfilled with recording as back up to manual data gathering. Analyzing was conducted through an open coding of the transcribed data, it created a Varity of topics. Only one technique was used when analyzing, according to table 1 at least two different techniques should be used to force the investigators to look beyond the initial impressions. The forming of hypothesis had a good iterative process where the found topics were discussed, connected and together constructed a logical foundation for two hypothesis. Conflicting literature was taken up in the discussion to provide dynamic in interpretation of the study. It improves the construct definition to not only have supporting litterture.


References

Paper: Adopt, adapt, abandon: Understanding why some young adults start, and then stop, using instant messaging
Journal: Computers in Human behavior
Impact factor: 2.489

Glaser & Strauss, 1967, The discovery of grounded theory: Strategies for qualitative research

(Eben A. Weitzman, 1997) esourceresearch.org

Paper: Mobile phones during work and non-work time: A case study of mobile, non-managerial workers


Impact factor: 1.381

5 kommentarer:

  1. Hi Gustav, seems like a fascinating qualitative paper. Did they come to any intruiging conclusions? The 21 participants, was it both men and women? I have never heard of this inductive method before, seems to be a special method. Does it seemed as something that should be used more and is it harder to conduct in comparison with normal qualitative methods?

    As you conclude, their pilot testing is good and i think it is very important to do it independant of which research method you are using. Well focus groups might be hard but the individual methods at least like interviews and questionnaires. But it was strange that they counted to the end result. Did they say anything about why they did that? 17 answers instead of 21 would still be good in my opinion.

    SvaraRadera
  2. Really interesting written Gustav! The only thing I wonder about is how they defined "abandon" in your first paper "Adopt, adapt, abandon: Understanding why some young adults start, and then stop, using instant messaging”?

    For me personally have I gone through those two first steps, but not 100 percent sure that I have gone through the last. Obviously have my behavior changed the last 10 years, but would I be someone who has abandoned instant messaging, if I'm only using facebook's chat function once and a wile?

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. Thank you Adam! The word "abandoned" was defined as either completely abandoned or reduced usage. I would also like to clarify that the participants was all college students and all lived on campus. I believe this fact had a bigger affect on the abandonment of IM compared to other social environment. Some comments suggested that some of the main reasons they reduced their use of IM, was because it was so close to walk over to a friend and have face-to-face conversation. That was more appreciated and it felt ridiculous to use IM when you had that option. I feel that this conclusion or motivation to why the participants IM use was reduced is misleading. It's a very certain environment, students living on a campus should not have been my first choose of target group. That might be one of the biggest weaknesses in this paper that the research was conducted on participants that is somewhat more isolated then most of the population.

      Radera
  3. I agree with you that using the first four participants in the interviews as a part of the end result is falsely done. As we discussed at the seminar they should be considered to be pilot-testers for the type of questions which should be posed.

    Do you have any thoughts on how the answers of the first four can make the end results skewed? Where the questions they ended up using for the rest of the participants very different?

    SvaraRadera
    Svar
    1. The interview questions wasn't attached with paper so I have no way of knowing how the test was executed more than as described in the text as an open ended interview. Thereby no way to compare what may have differed in the interview from the first participant to the end participant. The only information concerning changes during the interview was described following: "The interview protocol was iteratively refined during the first 3–4 interviews, but was relatively stable after that. The order of items was occasionally changed to adapt to the flow of conversation and particular circumstances of certain participants." From this information we can only tell that the ordar questions and subjects was discussed were changed and redefined questions. Further changes can only be left to speculations. From own experiences when conducting interviews, there is always a chance to influence participants and lead them on to say conclusions you as a interviewer are looking for. That may have happened and been improved after self reflection between tests. Do you have any further suggestions on the topic?

      Radera