This week unluckily we were only three at the seminar, but it made possible to go deeper in detail in the case study paper we have chosen.
Coincidentally Simon, Katerina and me picked up three completely different case studies each and the comparisons between them helped supplying interesting insights on why and how a particular methodology better suits a case or another.
Simon's paper was particularly peculiar because was about monitoring how a woman used social media while struggling with her deadly disease.
It was not a usual case study but highlighted the differences between conduct a research on an individual or a group.
In particular we stated that the study on a single subject might allow a better understanding of a phenomenon, but is less reliable in general.
["From Diagnosis to Death: A Case Study of Coping With Breast Cancer as Seen Through Online Discussion Group Messages"]
Kat's paper was conducted on a group of participants, it was a study called "The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university" (Kelling, Kelling and Lennon, 2013) and we discussed it in relation to my paper: "What Signals Are You Sending? - How Website Quality Influences Perceptions of Product Quality and Purchase Intentions" written by Wells, Valacich and Hess in 2011.
The main difference between these two papers was that in Kat's one the participants were asked to evaluate their use on real platforms whilst in mine the research was conducted using a platform simulating an eCommerce site.
This discussion led to define the subtle distinction between "case study" and "experiment" which we eventually drew defining a "case" as a event, behavior, person or generally phenomena occurring in real life, otherwise an "experiment" is a simulation of a real event recreating circumstances and contingencies in which it occurs in order to study the phenomenon.
At the end of the seminar we also discussed when a methodology is better than another and those which are more often used by KTH students.
As usual it is difficult to draw well defined conclusions, but in general the media technology field of study is more likely to use qualitative methodologies and lately we are increasingly seeing the use of bottom-up methods using multiple case studies to draw complex and general patterns and models.
In conclusion I must say this course gave me many hints and insights not just useful for the academic life, but for my professional path and future in general.
Thursday, 19 December 2013
Thursday, 12 December 2013
Qualitative and Case Study Research - Pre-Reflections
The paper I have chosen for this week reflection is "What Signals Are You Sending? - How Website Quality Influences Perceptions of Product Quality and Purchase Intentions" written by Wells, Valacich and Hess in 2011.
This study was published in "Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication", a 1.778 impact factor publication focused on social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies, It treats a wide range interdisciplinary scope within communication, business, education, political science, sociology, psychology, media studies, information science, and other disciplines.
In this paper researchers defines how the signal theory provides a framework for understanding how signal could be used by eCommerce websites owners to convince customers on the quality of products, these processes are meant to make decisions on purchases more certain.
The study is focused on the definition of those factors and features in eCommerce websites which are able to affect consumer perception on products quality.
The type on purchases consumers do on the web is mainly divisible in 2 categories: experience products (wine, hi-fi equipment etc.), which namely require more experience and direct feedback before being purchased, and search products (flight tickets, bookings etc.) which are more likely to be affected in decision by the website quality.
The offline commerce is affected by branding, retailer reputation, price and store environment but eCommerce is driven by different factors hence in the paper are presented six case examples to study different effects on the customer decision defining a qualitative study focused on quality perception reported by participants on a questionnaire.
The results validated the four hypotheses showing a high quality website conveys the perception of a better product, this effect is even amplified when less informations are given defining which signals are actively affecting decision factors.
In general this type research gives further insights and hints for future hypotheses, in particular when the subject of study is new qualitative studies help highlighting the key questions, issues and factors determining casualty relations.
On the other hand the paper has some limitations, as authors claim the non generalizability of results due to the narrow participants range, the signal theory has been applied only to websites extrinsic factor while a complete analysis would process intrinsic ones as well and finally results are depending both on the user and the purchased items.
To improve the reliability of the study authors suggest as aim for further researches to test for potential interaction between product asymmetries of information and signal credibility in order to underline direct casualty relationships.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case study is another research method which establish correlations with the general issues by presenting in detail a particular experimental setting.
For its nature a case study could both be descriptive and validate a certain experiment or used to draw theory conclusions taking advantage of both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
In order to supply a detailed scenario a case study has to list and describe staff and participants, steps in the analysis process and methodologies settings.
The paper I mentioned above could be seen as a case study research, it was conducted upon 240 undergraduate enrolled in an introductory management information systems course at a public university in the United States with 50.4% being female and an average age of 20.14.
The study took place in a controlled laboratory setting and subjects were randomly assigned to one of the six interface treatments, first providing a pre-survey that collected various demographic data, then providing the subjects with the website address for the experimental treatment and requiring them to complete a series of exercises designed to fully expose the subjects to the website content and features, and finally, a post-survey was proposed.
The table supplied on "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" by Eisenhardt (pag. 533) is useful to test and analyze strengths and weaknesses of a case study paper.In the research study by Wells, Valacich and Hess the main focus is well explained in the title itself "How Website Quality Influences Perceptions of Product Quality and Purchase Intentions" and the introduction also gives reason for the selected population among undergraduate students which are more likely to be eCommerce customers (then highlighting the narrow scope of subjects target in the conclusions) covering point 1 and 2.
In the selected paper "instruments and protocols" of the research are well presented and explained, tables of values and analysis processes are detailed and clearly outspread as required for point 3, moreover observation and analysis are constantly overlapping giving a prompt clarification of casualties and results as point 4 states.
Point 5 and 6 of the table shows some weaknesses of the selected research mainly due to the study subject and explained by authors in the paragraph "Limitations and Future Research"; No single standalone case has been taken in account and related to particular patterns nor it was possible to strictly and precisely define casual relationships and well shaped hypotheses.
Finally the paper is supported by a thick literature as point 7 requires, but even if a "theoretical saturation" is claimed, the paper seems not to reach a complete disclosure (point 8) giving insights for the future development of the same analysis, underlying the extremely changeling nature of the scenario and in my opinion authors slightly suggest a longitudinal study on the issue.
References:
Wells, J, Valacich, J, & Hess, T 2011, 'WHAT SIGNAL ARE YOU SENDING? HOW WEBSITE QUALITY INFLUENCES PERCEPTIONS OF PRODUCT QUALITY AND PURCHASE INTENTIONS', MIS Quarterly, 35, 2, pp. 373-A18, Business Source Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 December 2013
This study was published in "Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication", a 1.778 impact factor publication focused on social science research on communicating with computer-based media technologies, It treats a wide range interdisciplinary scope within communication, business, education, political science, sociology, psychology, media studies, information science, and other disciplines.
In this paper researchers defines how the signal theory provides a framework for understanding how signal could be used by eCommerce websites owners to convince customers on the quality of products, these processes are meant to make decisions on purchases more certain.
The study is focused on the definition of those factors and features in eCommerce websites which are able to affect consumer perception on products quality.
The type on purchases consumers do on the web is mainly divisible in 2 categories: experience products (wine, hi-fi equipment etc.), which namely require more experience and direct feedback before being purchased, and search products (flight tickets, bookings etc.) which are more likely to be affected in decision by the website quality.
The offline commerce is affected by branding, retailer reputation, price and store environment but eCommerce is driven by different factors hence in the paper are presented six case examples to study different effects on the customer decision defining a qualitative study focused on quality perception reported by participants on a questionnaire.
The results validated the four hypotheses showing a high quality website conveys the perception of a better product, this effect is even amplified when less informations are given defining which signals are actively affecting decision factors.
In general this type research gives further insights and hints for future hypotheses, in particular when the subject of study is new qualitative studies help highlighting the key questions, issues and factors determining casualty relations.
On the other hand the paper has some limitations, as authors claim the non generalizability of results due to the narrow participants range, the signal theory has been applied only to websites extrinsic factor while a complete analysis would process intrinsic ones as well and finally results are depending both on the user and the purchased items.
To improve the reliability of the study authors suggest as aim for further researches to test for potential interaction between product asymmetries of information and signal credibility in order to underline direct casualty relationships.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Case study is another research method which establish correlations with the general issues by presenting in detail a particular experimental setting.
For its nature a case study could both be descriptive and validate a certain experiment or used to draw theory conclusions taking advantage of both qualitative and quantitative research methods.
In order to supply a detailed scenario a case study has to list and describe staff and participants, steps in the analysis process and methodologies settings.
The paper I mentioned above could be seen as a case study research, it was conducted upon 240 undergraduate enrolled in an introductory management information systems course at a public university in the United States with 50.4% being female and an average age of 20.14.
The study took place in a controlled laboratory setting and subjects were randomly assigned to one of the six interface treatments, first providing a pre-survey that collected various demographic data, then providing the subjects with the website address for the experimental treatment and requiring them to complete a series of exercises designed to fully expose the subjects to the website content and features, and finally, a post-survey was proposed.
The table supplied on "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" by Eisenhardt (pag. 533) is useful to test and analyze strengths and weaknesses of a case study paper.In the research study by Wells, Valacich and Hess the main focus is well explained in the title itself "How Website Quality Influences Perceptions of Product Quality and Purchase Intentions" and the introduction also gives reason for the selected population among undergraduate students which are more likely to be eCommerce customers (then highlighting the narrow scope of subjects target in the conclusions) covering point 1 and 2.
In the selected paper "instruments and protocols" of the research are well presented and explained, tables of values and analysis processes are detailed and clearly outspread as required for point 3, moreover observation and analysis are constantly overlapping giving a prompt clarification of casualties and results as point 4 states.
Point 5 and 6 of the table shows some weaknesses of the selected research mainly due to the study subject and explained by authors in the paragraph "Limitations and Future Research"; No single standalone case has been taken in account and related to particular patterns nor it was possible to strictly and precisely define casual relationships and well shaped hypotheses.
Finally the paper is supported by a thick literature as point 7 requires, but even if a "theoretical saturation" is claimed, the paper seems not to reach a complete disclosure (point 8) giving insights for the future development of the same analysis, underlying the extremely changeling nature of the scenario and in my opinion authors slightly suggest a longitudinal study on the issue.
References:
Wells, J, Valacich, J, & Hess, T 2011, 'WHAT SIGNAL ARE YOU SENDING? HOW WEBSITE QUALITY INFLUENCES PERCEPTIONS OF PRODUCT QUALITY AND PURCHASE INTENTIONS', MIS Quarterly, 35, 2, pp. 373-A18, Business Source Elite, EBSCOhost, viewed 12 December 2013
Wednesday, 11 December 2013
Design Research - Conclusions
Design research is a type of study I have not considered before as "theory method" both for its practical appearance and specificity on a particular case.
The two lectures of today showed me how surprisingly a design research could take advantage of both qualitative and quantitative studies and also deeply explaining how a particular invention is composed and how it works.
The qualitative part of design theory is mainly gather user satisfaction about a product or analyze challenges and further developments in the field.
This kind of predictions are likely to vary drastically in the time, in particular in media and technology sector (as both Ylva's and Haibo Li's lectures highlighted).
Often it is difficult to grasp what "data" are in design theory and when it is possible calculations and statistics are not always easy to draw.
In this sense the contribution of quantitative methods in research studies mainly applies to the responses participants could be asked to give after a prototype trial.
I found particularly interesting Haibo Li's lecture when talking about "great", "good" and "innovative" ideas.
First it is important to discern between the problem itself and the problem solving: many examples showed how often the solution is simply hidden behind factors between us and the problem.
Then it is important to understand among many ideas those which are really breakthrough and there is no need for it to be truly innovative, sometimes they are just a "remake" of something already existing but simplifying the user interaction or turning it more compelling.
In this filtering process we should not rely too much on our sensibility -which is often fallacious- but mostly get numeric evidence through maths.
Some of the variables which show the usability in this process are for instance efficiency and effectiveness.
Giving validation and proof to our proposal is not only essential to prove the validity of the idea, but giving a simple explanation is also useful to convince people of the value it could raise.
In this way the technical communication is an essential and subtle step; In the explanation the "professor" approach is difficult to grasp for non-academic people, but the "salesman" one may be seen as deceptive and intrusive.
Giving practical proofs on tangible facts is the way enterpreneurs manage to raise fundings from investors and a good estimation, evaluation and validation step is a key factor for success in this type of research.
The two lectures of today showed me how surprisingly a design research could take advantage of both qualitative and quantitative studies and also deeply explaining how a particular invention is composed and how it works.
The qualitative part of design theory is mainly gather user satisfaction about a product or analyze challenges and further developments in the field.
This kind of predictions are likely to vary drastically in the time, in particular in media and technology sector (as both Ylva's and Haibo Li's lectures highlighted).
Often it is difficult to grasp what "data" are in design theory and when it is possible calculations and statistics are not always easy to draw.
In this sense the contribution of quantitative methods in research studies mainly applies to the responses participants could be asked to give after a prototype trial.
I found particularly interesting Haibo Li's lecture when talking about "great", "good" and "innovative" ideas.
First it is important to discern between the problem itself and the problem solving: many examples showed how often the solution is simply hidden behind factors between us and the problem.
Then it is important to understand among many ideas those which are really breakthrough and there is no need for it to be truly innovative, sometimes they are just a "remake" of something already existing but simplifying the user interaction or turning it more compelling.
In this filtering process we should not rely too much on our sensibility -which is often fallacious- but mostly get numeric evidence through maths.
Some of the variables which show the usability in this process are for instance efficiency and effectiveness.
Giving validation and proof to our proposal is not only essential to prove the validity of the idea, but giving a simple explanation is also useful to convince people of the value it could raise.
In this way the technical communication is an essential and subtle step; In the explanation the "professor" approach is difficult to grasp for non-academic people, but the "salesman" one may be seen as deceptive and intrusive.
Giving practical proofs on tangible facts is the way enterpreneurs manage to raise fundings from investors and a good estimation, evaluation and validation step is a key factor for success in this type of research.
Thursday, 5 December 2013
Design Research - Pre-Reflections
First I must say I have been really impressed by the very extreme meaning the word "multimedia" gains in this paper, the concept of integrate 3 different sense perception to carry information is incredibly fascinating and exciting.
The paper perfectly fits in the design research theory field explaining how the research has been carried out and the different steps in the product testing.
This kind of research is perfectly and expressly tailored on human perception of vibrating signals thus the first evaluation in this paper has been explaining which stimulus we can process, how and the margin of error/success of it, hence in the given research they were dealing with frequency and magnitude of vibrations.
Another evaluation of design research is how and which measurements are presented to the reader, for instance in this paper are presented the measures and the method to determine 3 main factors: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction.
The first two factors are measured by sampling the experiment results while candidates were trying the prototype while the third is integrated by a questionnaire giving an overview on both the attitude toward the system and insights on an eventual launching on the market.
Prototyping in this kind of research plays an essential role, moreover the interpretation of the results from experimenting it are deeply affecting the feedback to draw conclusions.
The prototype is meant to demonstrate how the final product would look like and provide feedbacks to reach a high-quality finished result.
Moreover prototyping is an integration of technology with learning, it aims to bring into contact the learner and the teacher giving both different feedback and insights throughout the experiment.
In the field of media technology prototyping gains a particular prominence for the nature if the subject itself; The multimedia sector is rapidly changing in particular increasing in performance and decreasing in price for components and a better design of prototypes could bring improved insights in the learning process.
Furthermore the prototype gives the researcher a feedback of an eventual launch of a product by answering some questions identifying the market space and position, for instance those given in this paper's questionnaire:
• Interests—Is this application interesting?
• Accept—Is this application acceptable?
• Comfort—Is this application comfortable to use?
• Interests—Are you interested in football?
• Willingness—Are you willing to buy such a product?
• Trainability—Is the training helpful?
• GUI—Is the graphical user interface easy to use?
In the concluding paragraphs the authors underline some remarks in this prototype's experiment, they first highlighted the high demand but also the challenging nature in vibrating signals integrations and how the training process could have bad side effect on candidates.
Moreover they state that even if participants found the prototype experiment compelling and interesting it was not enough to convince them to buy.
The paper perfectly fits in the design research theory field explaining how the research has been carried out and the different steps in the product testing.
This kind of research is perfectly and expressly tailored on human perception of vibrating signals thus the first evaluation in this paper has been explaining which stimulus we can process, how and the margin of error/success of it, hence in the given research they were dealing with frequency and magnitude of vibrations.
Another evaluation of design research is how and which measurements are presented to the reader, for instance in this paper are presented the measures and the method to determine 3 main factors: Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction.
The first two factors are measured by sampling the experiment results while candidates were trying the prototype while the third is integrated by a questionnaire giving an overview on both the attitude toward the system and insights on an eventual launching on the market.
Prototyping in this kind of research plays an essential role, moreover the interpretation of the results from experimenting it are deeply affecting the feedback to draw conclusions.
The prototype is meant to demonstrate how the final product would look like and provide feedbacks to reach a high-quality finished result.
Moreover prototyping is an integration of technology with learning, it aims to bring into contact the learner and the teacher giving both different feedback and insights throughout the experiment.
In the field of media technology prototyping gains a particular prominence for the nature if the subject itself; The multimedia sector is rapidly changing in particular increasing in performance and decreasing in price for components and a better design of prototypes could bring improved insights in the learning process.
Furthermore the prototype gives the researcher a feedback of an eventual launch of a product by answering some questions identifying the market space and position, for instance those given in this paper's questionnaire:
• Interests—Is this application interesting?
• Accept—Is this application acceptable?
• Comfort—Is this application comfortable to use?
• Interests—Are you interested in football?
• Willingness—Are you willing to buy such a product?
• Trainability—Is the training helpful?
• GUI—Is the graphical user interface easy to use?
In the concluding paragraphs the authors underline some remarks in this prototype's experiment, they first highlighted the high demand but also the challenging nature in vibrating signals integrations and how the training process could have bad side effect on candidates.
Moreover they state that even if participants found the prototype experiment compelling and interesting it was not enough to convince them to buy.
Quantitative Research - Conclusions
During yesterday's seminar we covered many issues and mostly advantages/disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative research methods.
We were asked to choose only 3 points among those we have been writing and it was interesting seeing how the different groups focused on a particular feature of the given method and on which we all agreed.
An advantage of the qualitative research methods is to give a deeper understanding of an issue -as long as questions are properly formulated in order to avoid misunderstanding-, feature that mere numbers or statistics drawn by quantitative methods are not able to supply.
Qualitative methods are particularly relevant when the research scope is not clear and researchers could find in the answers new insights to improve their questions and formulate new hypotheses.
The possibility have a broader scope of answers and opinions also require more time and effort for data analysis whilst quantitative methods give participants discrete answer values to choose between.
Quantitative study then make possible to interview a larger number of participants in the same time and the strict choice on fixed values does not provide possibility of uncertainty.
Analyzing numeric data is a quick operation to perform and might directly give statistic evidence to an hypothesis.
Moreover this feature makes quantitative methods particularly suitable for "longitudinal studies", those in which the same data are collected and analyzed several times over a longer time period, giving scope and insight on variations and fluctuations.
Our lecturer from Karolinska Institute then showed us some examples of guidelines on how questionnaires are formulated, giving reasons for any given approach.
I particular I found interesting the idea to constantly give "something back" to the participant, a feedback to explain him/her why that particular question was presented, how and what it calculates to make him/her more involved.
Also I found interesting (and in some way funny) the critic against giving an odd number of values to choose between in answers such as from "complete disagreement" to "complete agreement", because in case of uncertainty the trend would be to choose the middle value which should be approximated to the closest one then.
In conclusion what emerged is that there is not a better or worse research method, but the choice mostly depends on the research nature, and in many cases also a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods might be the best option.
We were asked to choose only 3 points among those we have been writing and it was interesting seeing how the different groups focused on a particular feature of the given method and on which we all agreed.
An advantage of the qualitative research methods is to give a deeper understanding of an issue -as long as questions are properly formulated in order to avoid misunderstanding-, feature that mere numbers or statistics drawn by quantitative methods are not able to supply.
Qualitative methods are particularly relevant when the research scope is not clear and researchers could find in the answers new insights to improve their questions and formulate new hypotheses.
The possibility have a broader scope of answers and opinions also require more time and effort for data analysis whilst quantitative methods give participants discrete answer values to choose between.
Quantitative study then make possible to interview a larger number of participants in the same time and the strict choice on fixed values does not provide possibility of uncertainty.
Analyzing numeric data is a quick operation to perform and might directly give statistic evidence to an hypothesis.
Moreover this feature makes quantitative methods particularly suitable for "longitudinal studies", those in which the same data are collected and analyzed several times over a longer time period, giving scope and insight on variations and fluctuations.
Our lecturer from Karolinska Institute then showed us some examples of guidelines on how questionnaires are formulated, giving reasons for any given approach.
I particular I found interesting the idea to constantly give "something back" to the participant, a feedback to explain him/her why that particular question was presented, how and what it calculates to make him/her more involved.
Also I found interesting (and in some way funny) the critic against giving an odd number of values to choose between in answers such as from "complete disagreement" to "complete agreement", because in case of uncertainty the trend would be to choose the middle value which should be approximated to the closest one then.
In conclusion what emerged is that there is not a better or worse research method, but the choice mostly depends on the research nature, and in many cases also a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods might be the best option.
Wednesday, 27 November 2013
Quantitative Research - Pre-Reflections
The paper "The Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale: An empirical investigation" is taken from the journal "Computers in Human Behavior" published on June 2013 which has an impact factor of 2.067.
This paper aims to draw media behavior and usage on a wide target range and taking in account a large scope of the the latest technology: smartphone usage, general social media usage, Internet searching, e-mailing, media sharing, text messaging, video gaming, online friendships, Facebook friendships, phone calling, and watching television.
From the title we can already observe the "empirical" nature of the investigation, based on 4 different quantitative methods:
As stated in paragraph 4 it has been difficult for authors to compare measurements across different studies due to the fact that each one uses its own methods, in this way this study was designed to fill the gap between these previous ones.
The greatest limitation in the paper was the narrow range of social status in the targeted population which was mostly gathered in Southern California urban areas.
Other problems regard the combination of samples from two different but similar research projects, the online survey methodology to collect data and the fact that data have being collected through university classroom restricting the participation to friends and family of those same students.
Regarding the paper "Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection"it is possible to assert that the results may give evidence in statistics in order to define whether our hypothesis were well-founded or not.
Moreover as I already mentioned for the previous paper quantitative methods allow "flatter result response" for wider targeted population with several differences and give suggestion for further studies observing the statistics.
Thus as already said quantitative methods better fit for certain subjects while need the support of qualitative ones for others in order to properly interpret the resulting data.
This paper aims to draw media behavior and usage on a wide target range and taking in account a large scope of the the latest technology: smartphone usage, general social media usage, Internet searching, e-mailing, media sharing, text messaging, video gaming, online friendships, Facebook friendships, phone calling, and watching television.
From the title we can already observe the "empirical" nature of the investigation, based on 4 different quantitative methods:
- Time measured in hours or minutes per day or per usage
- Frequency measured in the number uses in a particular time period
- Attitudinal Likert-type scales measured on a continuum from strongly agree to strongly disagree
- Experience sampling, querying use at a particular prompted point in time.
It is appealing to measure the actual time of usage but in this research the authors noticed big differences in the self-reported time and the actual time measured by a monitoring software on observed subjects' computers.
From the methods used in this paper, I evinced that quantitative methods are useful and effective on a wide target range with many differences in gender, age, ethnic/cultural background, social and economical position but they are probably appropriate for some subjects while for some other qualitative methods or a mix of the two types is more adequate, for instance in psychology, anthropology and sociology.
From the methods used in this paper, I evinced that quantitative methods are useful and effective on a wide target range with many differences in gender, age, ethnic/cultural background, social and economical position but they are probably appropriate for some subjects while for some other qualitative methods or a mix of the two types is more adequate, for instance in psychology, anthropology and sociology.
As stated in paragraph 4 it has been difficult for authors to compare measurements across different studies due to the fact that each one uses its own methods, in this way this study was designed to fill the gap between these previous ones.
The greatest limitation in the paper was the narrow range of social status in the targeted population which was mostly gathered in Southern California urban areas.
Other problems regard the combination of samples from two different but similar research projects, the online survey methodology to collect data and the fact that data have being collected through university classroom restricting the participation to friends and family of those same students.
Regarding the paper "Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection"it is possible to assert that the results may give evidence in statistics in order to define whether our hypothesis were well-founded or not.
Moreover as I already mentioned for the previous paper quantitative methods allow "flatter result response" for wider targeted population with several differences and give suggestion for further studies observing the statistics.
Thus as already said quantitative methods better fit for certain subjects while need the support of qualitative ones for others in order to properly interpret the resulting data.
Qualitative methods on the other hand are useful when focusing on a stricter targeted audience and provide deeper understanding and insights on the causalities for a given answer while quantitative methods are mere numbers.
Thus qualitative methods' results are more likely to change quickly in time and on different targets, furthermore not very often is possible to perform them on a broad range of targeted individuals due to practice difficulties.
Research and Theory - Conclusions
The theme of this week was a bit more difficult to grasp than the previous ones, usually it is easier to deal with practical issues -which are the complete opposite of theory- and also the lack of a "theory of theory" makes the approach to this subject dependent on the document we are taking in account.
After the seminar I must say that I am fairly skeptical about the categories to describe different type of theory found in "The Nature of Theory in Information Systems" by S. Gregor or at least about their static and narrow scope.
During the discussion we noticed that in some cases it was difficult to draw boundaries between two different types depending on the point of view we analyze a paper from.
For instance a paper treating "trends of..." it is supposed to highlights how a certain phenomenon would develop giving insights for predictions, but this was not the case for some of the papers treated which mostly attempted to analyze or explain a subject without any suggestion for further developments.
Furthermore these categories and approaches better apply to a certain type of sciences than others, for example there are many different features between natural, formal and social sciences that made me notice a fallacious nature in this dissertation which seems to propose strict diagrams and schemes.
Sometimes drawing a theory is not enough to turn it in accepted belief, but it takes time and many assessments from the research environment to assume it as a convention, which in many cases, in particular for constantly changeling phenomena, could make it obsolete once it has been accepted and moreover a theory is nearly useless as long as nobody knows or uses it.
Theories are essential to gain the knowledge we have thus my concern is about how to turn the theory in act, often we theoretically know a subject in deep but we are hardly able to put it in practice.
For instance this is one of the biggest differences between the anglo-germanic and the latin european areas in academic approaches: none of them is overcoming the other, but I noticed the difference between the studies I attended in Italy and the way education is carried out here in Sweden.
I always noticed that in latin countries we are taught on several subjects going really in deep in explanation and understanding but then we are missing a substantial part in education to turn the "know" into the "know how", which is more prominent here instead.
After the seminar I must say that I am fairly skeptical about the categories to describe different type of theory found in "The Nature of Theory in Information Systems" by S. Gregor or at least about their static and narrow scope.
During the discussion we noticed that in some cases it was difficult to draw boundaries between two different types depending on the point of view we analyze a paper from.
For instance a paper treating "trends of..." it is supposed to highlights how a certain phenomenon would develop giving insights for predictions, but this was not the case for some of the papers treated which mostly attempted to analyze or explain a subject without any suggestion for further developments.
Furthermore these categories and approaches better apply to a certain type of sciences than others, for example there are many different features between natural, formal and social sciences that made me notice a fallacious nature in this dissertation which seems to propose strict diagrams and schemes.
Sometimes drawing a theory is not enough to turn it in accepted belief, but it takes time and many assessments from the research environment to assume it as a convention, which in many cases, in particular for constantly changeling phenomena, could make it obsolete once it has been accepted and moreover a theory is nearly useless as long as nobody knows or uses it.
Theories are essential to gain the knowledge we have thus my concern is about how to turn the theory in act, often we theoretically know a subject in deep but we are hardly able to put it in practice.
For instance this is one of the biggest differences between the anglo-germanic and the latin european areas in academic approaches: none of them is overcoming the other, but I noticed the difference between the studies I attended in Italy and the way education is carried out here in Sweden.
I always noticed that in latin countries we are taught on several subjects going really in deep in explanation and understanding but then we are missing a substantial part in education to turn the "know" into the "know how", which is more prominent here instead.
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