The first paper I've chosen is Construction of Values in Online and Offline Dating Discourses: Comparing Presentational and Articulated Rhetorics of Relationship Seeking. It is written by Jimmie Manning. The research paper was publiced 9 october 2013 in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communucation which has an impact factor of 1.778.
Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
In this study there were 30 participants in this study were active members of a commercial dating website. The participants did interviews with the researchers about them self and their dating profile. The benefits of using a qualitative study is that its gives the researchers deeper understanding of an issue. It's also a good way to explore a new field in science. But its also time consuming and the results cant really be generalize since there where to few respondents to the survey.
What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
The researchers did use the first four questions about how the individual was trying to shape and market their identity their dating site. The fifth question worked as a validity check where the researchers asked the individual about the choices they made in writing their advertisements. Together the individual the were asked to guided them through every element on the profile.
Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
They only did one interview with each individual. The results only represent the opinions of the people in the studies at only one given time. Their priority's and wishes for a partner could maybe change after the first date etc. The sampling was also just done using the snowball method
Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
Its a research strategy where the focus is on analyzing a single case or multiple cases.
The goal with the research is to understanding the dynamics present within a single setting. Both qualitative and quantitative methods could be used when doing a case study.
Paper: The Presence of Hyperlinks on Social Network Sites: A Case Study of Cyworld in Korea from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communucation
Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.
The goal is to determine to which extent hyperlinks appear within user-submitted comments on Korean social network service Cyworld. The data was collected from 130 Korean National Assembly Members by using software that did a copy the profiles each day during April 2008 - June 2009. When the data sampling was done they did continue on with the analyzing of data.
It feels like the final conclusions are well connected to the data they found in the research.
Hi, Johannes!
SvaraRaderaI also read that qualitative studies are best used in relatively new research areas, however I argue that quantitative methods can generate good results as well in these new areas. Of course some qualitative results can be of good use when you try to define what kind of quantitative, statistical information you want to receive, but still I believe that some general quantitative questions could be asked together with the qualitative ones (in new research areas). Maybe this could at least give you a better idea of the basic structure of the research area.
Hi.
SvaraRaderaI'm wondering whether they used participants from one particular dating website or used participants from different websites? It sounds like it was from one site. Did they want to specifically analyse that website? If not and they wanted more general results for their questions, I think they should have used users from different sites. What do you think?
You wrote that they asked questions about how they shaped their identity on the site. I'm thinking whether those questions aren't considered private. Maybe they could have asked the more sensitive questions in a survey or something. In a paper I chose in a previous theme, they had done interviews with youths and then let them answer the more sensitive questions that they might not be able to say out loud in a survey.
I would also like to ask regarding this "snowball method". I don't think I recognize it. What kind of method is it?
Hej Johannes!
SvaraRaderaI think that the first paper that you chose had an interesting topic. I wanted to ask you if you consider the sample as representative. I am also wondering (as Zahra does) on whether the participants were chosen from one website. If yes, then the generalization of the results and the conclusions might be problematic.
I agree with your comment about the limitation of this study being that they only interviewed each individual once. I think that it would be more interesting and more helpful to have follow up interviews with the same participants.
Hello Johannes!
SvaraRaderaCool first paper, I be interesting to read an academic paper on a commercial online website, since many of the sights have a reputation of tricking customers on money. I juste thought about the fact that many of the interviewed may not be 100 per cent truthfully since it can be a sensitive subject for many. I can imagine that many people try to paint a better or worse picture of themselves then what actually is true. Is that something that the authors have taken under consideration or something that you believe to be a problem? Or is still interviews the best way of collecting valuable data in this case?