After the lecture on Monday and after reading both the article by Lunt and Livingstone on the use of focus groups in Media and Communications Research and Knight Chapter 3, I felt even more confused as to what "method" I should be using or proposing for my research proposal. So, I started by doing the following -- I took Eleanore's approach (through Luker) and created my research "flower". (see above). This has been really helpful in helping me to define the scope of what I'm interested in studying but now I'm left to ponder...do I have a "why" question which would call for more qualitatitive methods or a "how" question calling for more quantitative methods? I won't take you through the various iterations of my question, as I posed it on paper but I'm left with the following: How does the use of social networking sites, for children under the age of 13, affect their feelings of empathy toward their peers and the world? How do they understand the terms of use for the site and how do they perceive the open access of information that they are providing to their peers (among others)? I think I have a questionnaire in my future (and a whole lot of consent forms!)
I would recommend interviews, actually, as I think as your questions are too open-ended for questionnaires. You also seem more interested in capturing more ambiguous types of info - feelings, thoughts and understanding. Also, kids (like adults) have trouble describing stuff like this - being able to adapt your questions and follow up on interesting and unexpected answers would be key.
ReplyDeleteHave you come across any of the work done by Leslie Regan Shade on kids/youth and internet use? She did some really great research on a related topic a few years ago that you can use as a jumping off point. She also had a pretty cool method - interviews at the kids' homes, so that they could show her the things they normally did on the computer, which she then used as a tool for asking her questions (as in - show me the site you and your friends go to...and as they started putting in their info, she'd ask about the information they had to give the site to create an account, what they thought the site DID with that information, whether or not it was important to read the privacy policy, etc.).
Just a thought!!
Your daisy looks gorgeous. What kind of software did you use to draw it?
ReplyDeleteSara -- thanks so much for the feedback and direction, I will definitely look the work you mentioned above.
ReplyDeleteCordelia -- nothing special with the software, I've become a powerpoint maven over the years so I drew it with the powerpoint tools.