The Final Post - and the importance of looking from different perspectives

I made a Google Docs with links to the comments I’ve made during the course and also pasted the actual comment underneath it. Unfortunately I wasn’t aware that we were supposed to make comments from the start, so some of them are posted a couple of weeks after they were supposed to be. This, on the other hand, could be good in the sense that I had learnt more about the subject when commenting! I also wasn’t aware that we were going to compile the comments in this way, so I think that I have lost some of them, but that’s life on the vast internet! I have commented about 2-4 comments each week (and some additional that unfortunately are lost) so I guess that I’m aiming for the grade C.

However, here is the link for the Google Docs, and I’ve made it commentable for everyone with the link so feel free to comment there as well if you like to! But I rather get more comments here on the blog since it’s easier to have all in one place so to speak! :)

So, this is going to be my final post for this course. It will consist of some reflections of the course and what I’ve learnt about combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions.

I’ve always thought of myself as a person that doesn’t like to write (or read), but during this course I’ve started to enjoy writing and reading. I don’t consider myself as a good writer (yet), but I think that it’s something one can continue working on the entire life! As for reading, it has been fun reading others’ blog posts. Many of my fellow students is really good at writing which have made it a good way for me to experience new ways of expressing myself in writing and I've learnt a lot of new words and expressions.

But what have I learnt about combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions then?

I would say that theme 4, 5 and 6 has been the most hands-on themes from which I have learnt specifically methodological knowledge. Theme 1, 2 and 3 was more background to what knowledge, theory and critical thinking really are, which also has been needed in the course when discussing the different methods and what each of them contributes with.

When starting at theme 4 on quantitative studies with Olle Bälter we also got into qualitative studies in a natural discussion flow. It’s often easy to start comparing the two types of methods. I think a combination of these two are always to prefer. They complement each other in good ways.

This was some of the pros with quantitative and qualitative methods that we discussed during the seminar:



I’ve also learnt that it’s good to use qualitative methods when researching a relatively new subject to get qualitative results for others to use in further research later on. However I still think it’s good to also use quantitative methods as a complement to get an overview of how the masses responds to the questions of the research. It’s also often a good way to get statistics that can be presented graphically, which I like when reading a research paper. It often makes it more easy to grasp.

The most important methodological knowledge I learnt when continuing on to theme 5 was the importance of defining the problem. I also learnt that the divide of time often is quite unfair. Haibo said that 10% of the time is placed in the defining and almost 90% goes to solving the problem. If we instead put more effort into the defining of the problem the solving hasn’t got to take that much time and we can actually find a simpler solution. I think this way of thinking also is applicable for using methods in a research. If you start by putting more effort into defining your research then you can see more clearly what methods you should use or what to ask, and then it also can be more time efficient, because you might realise that you were about to use almost redundant methods. Haibo also said that to define a problem properly you should look at it from different point of views, which also can be connected to the profitability of using different methods when doing a research. It will give the research more inputs and open it up for more solutions, or experiences.

Here is a really short video of one who knows how to approach things from another perspective that I think you'll enjoy: http://instagram.com/p/uLFkRejJyo/?modal=true

Theme 6 was a bit confusing at first, but I think I have gotten a more defined view of what a case study research is. The whole method of case studies is building upon using different methods in order to explore and drag conclusions from real life complex phenomenon. What I’ve learnt from this theme is that a case study is based on a real problem, uses different methods and that it’s inductive and doesn’t have any prior hypotheses but rather depend on the experience that is gained during the research. I also really liked the Eisenhardt text and think it will be good to use it when doing a case study research, to be sure to get all the components needed for a valid research.


The most challenging parts of the course were probably theme 1 and 2. I've written, in my Reflection after Theme 2, "You need to seek the truth by logical arguing but also by looking at the object from different perspectives" and also "When discussing Adorno & Horkheimer we talked about a gap between the existing and the possible ("A society that we live in, and a society that we want to live in") and that we need to change the way we think to change the society". I found this interesting now when reading it again. I see this course as an eye-opener in the sense of the importance to look at things from different perspectives, thinking in different ways and thereby using different methods also fit nicely into the picture. (I also got a lot of interesting comments on that particular post, which you can read more about in the comments compilation.)


All in all, I think I've learnt a lot more than that I can think of right now, and I hope that all we have discussed will stick with me and that I get chances to develop these thoughts further in coming courses.

I guess that's all for now, and thank you who have read my postings and commented all your cleaver comments!

//Malin Bokström

Reflection after Theme 6

This last theme was about qualitative and case study research, but mostly case study research since we had more trouble understanding what differed a case study research from other “ordinary” research. I understood a case study as method that can take something that aren’t seen as reality yet but make a concept of it to make it real. Hm, that was a bit “messy”.

We started talking about that a case is something that is out there in the real world; it can be a company in crisis, a medical patient with a set of symptoms, a criminal case, etc. They all have a given natural delimitation. The researcher can also sometimes put their own limitations on something that they want to prove is a case, and make a research about it. That is a way for new phenomenon/cases to appear - if the concept they find is accepted as “real”.

When we talked about theory in the beginning of the course we also discussed what theory is not. We did this on the seminar as well. A user study is for example not a case study, unless it focuses on a real life problem with real users. Another example can be a market survey or inquiry since it's only telling us what is.

So a case study research is a research about something already naturally limited complex phenomenon, or it’s a research about what the researcher believes is a new coming phenomenon and then he limits it himself. During the research you use different methods that you think is appropriate for the research.

Finally we came to three pinpoints of what a case study research is:

• It’s something that exists in the real life with a natural limitation.
• It uses different methods.
• It’s something inductive - no starting hypotheses and drags conclusions of experience. 

I also commented on something from the Eisenhardt article - that for a case study to be valid it should have 4-10 cases. My chosen paper had 3 cases, and I thought it was valid for the area it looked upon. What Eisenhardt meant was that it's often necessary with a bit more cases to really be a valid research. Leif also said that it has been “experienced” that the difference of validation (not sure what to call it..) is between a few and many cases, and it has been shown that 3 cases is “a few” and 4 or more are “many”. We also had a little side note about the program “Fem myror är fler än fyra elefanter”. The fifth ant makes the ants a majority even though they are much smaller than the elephants, and therefore maybe also more valid in the cases situation.

Reflection after Theme 5

This weeks lectures got rescheduled so it feels a bit divided and far apart. So now we've already read and handed in the 6th theme but we still have the last lecture for theme 5 (with Haibo Li) this afternoon.

First of, sadly I don’t know if I learnt so much from the first lecture. I was a bit disappointed actually. I think her texts were really interesting and I have talked a lot about them with both family, friends and fellow students. But the lecture was more of a recap of the articles, so it didn't really feel like it mattered if one had read them or not, and I didn't get so much further understanding of the theme from going to the lecture - it felt a bit redundant so to speak. But maybe it was my anticipations that were too high?

However, she talked about how the research design affects the research which I hope that Haibo also might talk a bit more about today! She sometimes had to train participants in her research for the tasks that they were supposed to test, so they were acquainted with the system before doing the task. But then she argued that they might need other participants for other tasks in the research and then they needed to give them some start up training in the system as well. The result will probably be different if using the same participants for all the tasks, compared to if using different participants for different tasks. Which method to use is of course then depending on the research.

Haibo Li’s lecture was really inspiring, as usual! He talked about getting from an idea to a prototype or product. To do this he had five bullet points:

• How to come up with an idea? 
• How to filter the ideas? 
• How to validate an idea?
• How to evaluate an idea?
• How to communicate your idea?

He also talked about problem solving, and that it’s equally important to define the problem as it is actually solving it. You can find much easier solutions with a good definition of the problem. However, we are often locked to our "usual" problem solving methods so it might be hard to look outside the box for the most simple solutions.

Finally, Haibo talked about that even when you have defined your problem, you have found a solution, you have validated it through proof of concept and evaluated some prototypes or so on. But then you need to communicate the idea! It is as important as the other steps and you then need to show that you care about customer satisfaction. You should be able to explain in what way your product do so as fast as the doors of an elevator opens and closes (the elevator pitch).

We also watched the first 3 minutes of this clip to get an understanding of what problem solving can be, and that there are several solutions to all obstacles.

Theme 6 - Qualitative & Case Study Research

Okay, so since I accidentally chose a paper with qualitative methods during the quantitative theme I thought that I could use it now as well, when it actually fits the theme! (It fortunately had a quantitative method as well of course..) So I chose the text "Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences" from the journal of Computer-Mediated Communication with an impact factor of 2.019.

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods? 
The qualitative method of this paper was "open-ended in-depth face-to-face interviews" with eight of the respondents from an earlier quantitative online survey. "The interviews were recorded, transcribed, and then analyzed through a combination of qualitative content analysis, typological reduction analysis, and hermeneutical/rhetorical interpretation."
The benefits of an open-ended interview is that the respondents might get into subjects that you as a researcher never would have thought about asking and therefore you gain new interesting answers. It can also be limiting if the respondents get to far away from your main questions, but that is also your responsibility as the interviewer to control. Face-to-face is beneficial in a way that you can see the respondents facial expressions and body language which helps with the conversation. It's easier to misunderstand each other without the face-to-face interaction in a dialogue.

2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I haven't thought so much about how to pick which respondents to conduct the interviews before. I think we only took some when doing our bachelor essay. I realize now that it might not have been so good. When looking for qualitative and topically relevant answers it's better to chose respondents that has good answers and not do a random select.  

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
Methodological problems include concerns about reliability, validity and dependability of data, results, conclusions and generalizations in a research enterprise. I think this study is a quite generalize one and they get the answers they seem to be searching for and thus I think that there aren't any great problems. I think it's good that they are using both quantitative and qualitative methods in the study and I don't know how they should have used the qualitative methods in other ways. They did a good job, confirmed what others also had found and the workload seemed reasonable.

Part 2:

For part 2 I chose the paper "Social media competitive analysis and text mining: A case study in the pizza industry" with an impact factor 2.042

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is a way of using a single or several examples of “real-life” phenomena, events or persons to analyze and consequently derive conclusions. Case study research are generally aimed to use cases to “provide description, test theory, or generate theory”. (From www.kth.se)

In my own words I would say that a case study is often when you observe people doing a task in real life for you to gain knowledge about some explicit part of the task. 

2. 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.

They are defining the research questions and the target group early in the case which is good. They have chosen the three largest US Pizza chains (Pizza Hut, Domino’s Pizza and Papa John’s Pizza) and show arguments for why this industry is relevant to do the case around so it's not only "random sampling", and then they specify three research questions to answer. 

They also used methods for multiple data collection. They looked at quantitative data about the Pizza chains from their social medias (such as #followers, #likes, #shares, #postings...) and then applied different text mining analysis on the text messages. I think they also do well during the "Analyzing data" and they do both within-case analysis and cross-case analysis.

I couldn't find so much of shaping hypotheses or overlapping data collection and analysis during the case nor so much comparison with conflicting literature. They also had a "pre-defined" ending with only 3 cases but it seemed to be enough for them, although the Eisenhardt text said that it was best to have about 4-10 cases, so maybe this case research isn't as "valid" as it could have been...but I'm not sure, we can leave that as a question for the seminar!

Facebook and Online Privacy: Attitudes, Behaviors, and Unintended Consequences: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2009.01494.x/pdf
Methodological issues: https://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20110310100631AAFNbNn 
Case Study research: https://www.kth.se/social/course/DM2572/page/case-study-research/
Building Theories from Case Study Research: http://www.jstor.org.focus.lib.kth.se/stable/258557
Social media competitive analysis and text mining: http://www.sciencedirect.com.focus.lib.kth.se/science/article/pii/S0268401213000030

Theme 5 - Design Research

Part 1 - “Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball”

1. How can media technologies be evaluated?

In the article they are using usability evaluation that are considering evaluation for Effectiveness, Efficiency and Satisfaction. This is done through user testing by calculating the error-rate when users try to understand the vibration-impulses, by calculating the cognitive delay-time and through questionnaires regarding if the user experienced the tests as positive or negative.

2. What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes is a good way to test your idea, and to physically see what is good or bad with it. It’s also a very concrete way of finding out if anything wasn’t experienced as you thought it would be and what problems that occurs. It’s also good for you as a research group to make a prototype to see that you all have the same thing in mind, words may often be misinterpreted and then it’s good to put your ideas into a prototype.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

Proof of concept is a demonstration that is used to know whether or not this research or product is worth developing. Does it have potential for real world application? This is necessary because otherwise you might make a product that works well but the users may not know how or why to use it and then it’s redundant.    

4. What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

A prototype is a way of showing some of the functionalities that the finished product will have. Prototypes is good in the way that they increase user involvement during the developing state of production and that often makes it less time-consuming and you often find problems faster which makes it less costly. The limitations is that the testing users might think that the prototype should represent the finished product when it actually is a way of testing out some of the functions, and far from done. This might affect the users evaluation.

5. How can design research be communicated/presented?

I think prototypes is a good way to show design research because it gives the users a way of experiencing the concept in another way then just through text or drawings.

PART 2

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

A collaborative setting is when there are two or more participants during the testing; and a single user setting is then when there's only one participant at a time. I think it can be harder to analyse the result from a collaborative setting due to the fact that you have to look at all participants at the same time and see how they interact. The participants can also affect each other during the test when collaborating which can be both positive and negative.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

I think it’s good to combine both qualitative and quantitative methods in a study! I think you should start by doing a quantitative method to get the understanding in a broader perspective when doing research and then go into some depth with qualitative methods on some parts of the subject.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

This seems to be almost the same as using qualitative and quantitative methods... The subjective (qualitative) data is data that is experienced or perceived through our senses while the objective (quantitative) data is numerical information through statistics and testing. The subjective method therefore seems more personal like a qualitative interview while the objective methods seems to fulfill the gap where we need some covering numbers on the broader perspectives as from quantitative surveys with a lot of people answering questions later used for statistics.

Proof of concept: http://www.techopedia.com/definition/4066/proof-of-concept-poc

Subjective/Objective methods: http://adamschwartz.hubpages.com/hub/The-Difference-Between-Objective-and-Subjective-Data Bild: http://istqbexamcertification.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Prototype-model.jpg

Reflection after Theme 4

I think this seminar/workshop was a little confusing but still very interesting. We got to come up with pros and cons regarding both quantitative AND qualitative methods although this weeks theme was Quantitative Methods.

The tasks during the seminar was fun and I thought it was a little ironic that it was the qualitative answers we got points for and not the quantitative. So one could think that Olle Bälter wanted to promote qualitative methods before quantitative, because it was the qualitative answers that were rewarding and they are often obtained through qualitative methods…

Anyway, the most practical experiences I’m taking with me from the seminar is the way to construct a survey for example:

• You should always have a odd number of boxes if the respondents are to answer some question of which degree they are agreeing or disagreeing so they have the opportunity to be neutral. 
• Do not have statements that can be interpreted or answered in two ways such as “Some people wander aimlessly through life, but I’m not one of them”.
  If I disagree then what am I disagreeing with? Do I think that some people do wander aimlessly and that I am one of them, or do I think that every person do have a plan?

We also discussed much about web questionnaires vs paper questionnaires. I think that web seemed like the best option most of the times, but paper has it’s profits as well and it shouldn’t be forgotten. Web has the strong advantage of getting the answers digitally at once which makes it easier to compile and the one thing that Olle pointed out (which seemed to be one of the most important parts) were that web is safer due to the lack of middlemen!