Fellow journeyers, (is that a word?)
While Dr. Rickly may read this and wince, a learning moment has occurred. This summer we've explored (yes, I like that word) digital environments and the challenges of conducting research in them.
My topic concerns healthcare. In preparing my presentation, I have reread several articles from a course last fall. I selected articles that researched perceptions because my project looks at two different perceptions of hospitalists. As I reread this articles, I'm beginning to see the wide disparity of conducting research digitally versus face to face. I was rereading a paper by Consedine, et al, "Breast Screening in Response to Gain, Loss, and Empowerment Framed Messages among Diverse, Low-Income Women. The authors emphasized framed messages and the importance of income and gender.
I read the notes I had written as I read the articles in hopes of using some of the same methods from these papers. That's when the lightbulb moment occurred. Most research the influence of income, gender, etc. on the subject matter. However, in my blog research, I don't know the income, gender, etc. of my subjects. Someone might be male but post with a female name, etc. Income rarely is referred to except that most on this blog present themselves as physicians. Only the written word provides the context. And, as Dr. Rickly stated in one of my postings when I had attempted to categorize the comments, what happens if I don't categorize them? What opportunities does this offer the research?
I'm not forgetting that we have seen researchers take on an active role in their research community, and through these develop relationships where they discover more personal information. My postings are my process....I enjoy reading yours!
Debra
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4 comments:
Debra - You bring up an interesting point. How do we know age, gender, race, income level in an online environment? We have to trust our participants to be honest with this information if we need it. I had been thinking this example proves that it is MORE difficult to do research in an online environment, but upon furthur reflection, I'm not quite sure this is the case. Participants could lie to the researcher even in a face-to-face setting. How is the researcher to know if the income the individual wrote on their questionnaire is accurate? Does the researcher ask for the pay stubs to prove it? (I really don't think doing that would be ethical, but I've been wrong before). As a (pretty much) brand new researcher, I have learned a lot this summer. I have learned to question my previously held ideas and beliefs to ensure they can stand up under scrutiny. Thank you for this posting. It has opened my eyes as well.
Here's a scary notion: I got an email the other day from a friend in our campus distance learning office who says some genius has decided we might need to have video cameras in the homes of all online students so the universities can be sure the registered student is actually the person doing the work. They've got a point; pretty hard to know whether I'm the one writing my blog or whether I've hired a second to do it for me (well, obviously not my niece, who clearly has a nicer turn of phrase than I do!), but then we'd have to have some sort of surveillance on onsite students, too, to make sure they aren't hiring their roommates to do their homework, wouldn't we?
I think we have to come to an agreement that we have to accept people at their word (unless we have some reason to doubt them; we can often spot the ones who copy from the web!) and realize that some are going to slip through without playing fair. Of course, we also have the "doctors" who practice medicine in Texas for years before somebody figures out they really never went to med school....We'll always have a few...
Here is an interesting link:
http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i46/46a00103.htm
New Systems Keep a Close Eye on Online Students at Home
You and Ali have some interesting points concerning the demographics of participants in internet research and I can see the need for follow-up surveys to verify this information, if it is important. But I still find value in determining that internet users are not obtaining information from traditional sources or that they turn to the internet first for information.
I also keep looking at the dilemma that we can quote the participant and potentially strip them of their anonymity or we can quote them without their permission and be accused of plagiarism. This does create a serious problem for specific, verifiable qualitative research, but we can still count that there are certain number of postings on a specific topic.
I am thankful that we are not bound by these restrictions for this paper, but I do understand the severity of the issues for IRBs, publications and dissertation research.
Some of the articles I read for my paper did count self-proclaimed gender and unknown genders along with whether the researcher determined if the poster had any medical background.
Tough challenges, but so many unexplored territories in digital research.
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