An update from a buried researcher

I’m in the final stretch of data gathering, hoping to squeeze in a couple more interviews this weekend and perhaps one more observation.  This next Monday, April 7th is the day I’m cutting myself off. It’s time to stop the madness!! I’ve come to a conclusion that it’s not the amount of data that’s the [...]

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Coding is Hard

A grounded theory approach calls for an iterative process of data analysis beginning with open coding. I’ve looked to Corbin & Strauss, seminal authors on grounded theory, to learn that open coding involves several steps:

Apply concepts to data to describe & apply meaning to observed phenomena
Discover categories to group together similar concepts
Apply properties to each [...]

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Analyzing all that data

I’ve developed two slightly different analysis forms from what I’d first posted to this blog. They’re spreadsheets to help with the process of recording data from my SL interviews & observations, and then to analyze that data.
One <very obvious!> issue I’d neglected when putting together my analysis form is that a Word document doesn’t offer what [...]

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IRB Final Approval Granted!

IRB Final Approval Letter
At 9:01 am (CST) this morning, on March 6th, 2008, I received the following email from Dr. Charlie Stoops, IRB Chair at Dominican University. The IRB has granted final approval for my research project, so I can begin solicitation of research subjects and do real interviews & observation now.
Even though the IRB process [...]

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Have I taken on too much?

Exhibit 1: The full experience of my pilot interview lasted 3 hours. The interview itself was about an hour. Set-up, fieldnote transcriptions, & some initial analysis added up to an additional 2 hours. This doesn’t include the coding I plan to do as well. I’d say this makes it less feasible to do the 10 interviews this [...]

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Notes on verbal fieldnotes

As I’ve mentioned, verbal field notes have made my research process simpler, both in interviewing and observing. A protocol involving verbal field notes is not without its challenges, as this pilot stage of my project has taught me. What have I learned so far?

Transcribe immediately. After every observation/interview, I budget the appropriate amount of time [...]

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Love me some Audacity

 
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Audacity is my new favorite tool as a researcher. Thanks to another great suggestion by Jim Oliver, MLIS IT guru at St. Kate’s, I’m recording my fieldnotes verbally. I met with Jim last week over some technical frustrations around trying to make screen capture work with my SL sessions. We talked about a crazy plan [...]

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IRB Approval Steps Away

gslis-08-001-approval-pending-changes.doc
I’m happy to announce that I received this letter from Dominican University’s Institutional Review Board today. After a couple of minor tweaks, my IRB approval will be locked down. This puts me in prime position to move out of the testing phase I’ve been in for the past week and delve into the real thing. [...]

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Fuzzy boundaries

One way to accomplish an ethnography with fuzzy boundaries is to consider an approach of following people, ideas, narratives, conflicts, etc rather than a spatially oriented outlook. (Marcus, 1995). This emphasis on connectivity recalls my hypothesis that sociability — people connections! — are a hallmark of information seeking behavior in virtual worlds like SL.
However, in [...]

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Institutional Review Board (IRB) Application

I’ve worked out the kinks in my IRB application this week. It will hopefully be approved by the end of this month, just in time for the start of my research in March.
irb-form.pdf
I first felt that, while necessary, the IRB process involved a whole lot of administrative hoo-ha. As a got further into the process [...]

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