Interviews, focus groups and questionnaires are everyday tools of the academic researcher in business and management studies. Most research degrees and many academic peer reviewed journal papers have employed one or more of these techniques. Ironically the knowledge and skills required to use these tools are not often well taught and the books available on these topics can be daunting. This highly accessible book addresses these three field methods and explains how they may be employed to good effect. The book also provides examples or research protocols, letters and checklists which are of direct use to researchers using these methods.
Perhaps one of the most surprising if not actually unsettling things about the Internet and the Web is that there is always something new on the horizon and that it is very difficult to see where this new technology will take us. When ICT was just about big computers and organisational systems it was pretty obvious where the technology was moving us. We all knew about Moore’s Law and that we were going to have greater capacity, smaller and faster devices every year. And during the 1990s and the first decade of the third millennium we all became used to what the Internet and the Web had to offer. But Social Software in the form of Web 2.0 is different. It has put technology in the hands of people who we would never have given it a second thought a few years ago. Leading Issues in Social Knowledge Management contains leading edge research which addresses some of the main issues for those of us who want to use Social Software in a Knowledge Management context or who want to study it or research it. There are 10 research papers as well as an introduction from David Gurteen who is a leading thinker in this field.
"The essays in this collection offer a timely intervention in digital humanities scholarship, bringing together established and emerging scholars from a variety of humanities disciplines across the world. The first section offers views on the practical realities of teaching digital humanities at undergraduate and graduate levels, presenting case studies and snapshots of the authors' experiences alongside models for future courses and reflections on pedagogical successes and failures. The next section proposes strategies for teaching foundational digital humanities methods across a variety of scholarly disciplines, and the book concludes with wider debates about the place of digital humanities in the academy, from the field's cultural assumptions and social obligations to its political visions." (4e de couverture).
Much applied research takes place as if complex social problems--and evaluations of interventions to address them--can be dealt with in a purely technical way. In contrast, this groundbreaking book offers an alternative approach that incorporates sustained, systematic reflection about researchers' values, what values research promotes, how decisions about what to value are made and by whom, and how judging the value of social interventions takes place. The authors offer practical and conceptual guidance to help researchers engage meaningfully with value conflicts and refine their capacity to engage in deliberative argumentation. Pedagogical features include a detailed evaluation case, "Bridge to Practice" exercises and annotated resources in most chapters, and an end-of-book glossary.
Try This explores interdisciplinary research methods employed in research in writing studies but rarely drawn upon in undergraduate courses. This shifts writing instruction from a model of knowledge delivery and solitary research to a pedagogy of knowledge-making and an acknowledgment of research writing as collective, overlapping, and distributed. Each chapter is organized around methods to approach a particular kind of primary data--texts, artifacts, places, and images. Accompanying "Try This" invention projects in each chapter invite readers to "try" the research methods. Some projects are designed to try during class time and take 5 to 15 minutes, while others are extensive and will take days to accomplish. Each research writing opportunity introduced in a "Try This" invention project is designed to scaffold a research project. Each chapter offers different genres that allow research to circulate and connect meaningfully with audiences, including digital research posters, data visualizations, and short-form presentations. This book is also available as an open access ebook through the WAC Clearinghouse.
This lively, practical text presents a fresh and comprehensive approach to doing qualitative research. The book offers a unique balance of theory and clear-cut choices for customizing every phase of a qualitative study. A scholarly mix of classic and contemporary studies from multiple disciplines provides compelling, field-based examples of the full range of qualitative approaches. Readers learn about adaptive ways of designing studies, collecting data, analyzing data, and reporting findings. Key aspects of the researcher's craft are addressed, such as fieldwork options, the five phases of data analysis (with and without using computer-based software), and how to incorporate the researcher's “declarative” and “reflective” selves into a final report. Ideal for graduate-level courses, the text includes:* Discussions of ethnography, grounded theory, phenomenology, feminist research, and other approaches.* Instructions for creating a study bank to get a new study started.* End-of-chapter exercises and a semester-long, field-based project.* Quick study boxes, research vignettes, sample studies, and a glossary.* Previews for sections within chapters, and chapter recaps.* Discussion of the place of qualitative research among other social science methods, including mixed methods research.
Research Methods in Human-Computer Interaction is a comprehensive guide to performing research and is essential reading for both quantitative and qualitative methods. Since the first edition was published in 2009, the book has been adopted for use at leading universities around the world, including Harvard University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Washington, the University of Toronto, HiOA (Norway), KTH (Sweden), Tel Aviv University (Israel), and many others. Chapters cover a broad range of topics relevant to the collection and analysis of HCI data, going beyond experimental design and surveys, to cover ethnography, diaries, physiological measurements, case studies, crowdsourcing, and other essential elements in the well-informed HCI researcher's toolkit. Continual technological evolution has led to an explosion of new techniques and a need for this updated 2nd edition, to reflect the most recent research in the field and newer trends in research methodology. This Research Methods in HCI revision contains updates throughout, including more detail on statistical tests, coding qualitative data, and data collection via mobile devices and sensors. Other new material covers performing research with children, older adults, and people with cognitive impairments. - Comprehensive and updated guide to the latest research methodologies and approaches, and now available in EPUB3 format (choose any of the ePub or Mobi formats after purchase of the eBook) - Expanded discussions of online datasets, crowdsourcing, statistical tests, coding qualitative data, laws and regulations relating to the use of human participants, and data collection via mobile devices and sensors - New material on performing research with children, older adults, and people with cognitive impairments, two new case studies from Google and Yahoo!, and techniques for expanding the influence of your research to reach non-researcher audiences, including software developers and policymakers
This book focuses on photography within the social research field, building a solid foundation for photography as a social research method and describing different techniques and applications of photo research. It provides a comprehensive approach to research photography, from preparation and the ethical considerations that need to be understood prior to going into the field, to collecting data, analysis and preparing research for publication. It also introduces artistic genres of photography to help readers with the choices they make when pursuing photographic research and as a reminder that when collecting photographs that they are in fact producing art. The ethical issues examined place a new focus on dignity and considerations of participant anonymity and recognition, informed consent, working with vulnerable groups, unequal power relationships and possible intervention. Combining preparation and ethics, it examines how best to collect and take good photographs, and explores the practical issues of stigma and introduces Verstaendnis (german: understanding) to aid researchers in the field. Subsequently, the book discusses the different photo-analytical approaches for researchers and provides examples of how to analyse photographs using the different techniques. Lastly, it offers guidelines, with examples, for researchers wanting to publish their work.
The Palgrave Handbook of Methods for Media Policy Research covers the craft that is and the methods used in media and communication policy research. It discusses the steps involved in conducting research, from deciding on a topic, to writing a report and everything in between and, furthermore, deals with a wide variety of qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis. The handbook invites researchers to rediscover trusted methods such as document analysis, elite interviews and comparisons, as well as to familiarize themselves with newer methods like experiments, big data and network analysis. For each method, the handbook provides a practical step-by-step guide and case studies that help readers in using that method in their own research. The methods discussed are useful for all areas of media and communication policy research, for research concerning the governance of both mass media and online platforms, and for policy issues around the globe. As such, the handbook is an invaluable guide to every researcher in this field.
