Comments on theme 6

1) https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-blog-post-2-qualitative-and.html?showComment=1477245220361
2) https://u1gixy4z.blogspot.se/2016/10/after-theme-6-qualitative-and-case.html?showComment=1477246851192
3) https://u1bauz11.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-reflection.html?showComment=1477249419372
4) https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-62.html?showComment=1477250946287
5) https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-6-qualitative_70.html?showComment=1477252930836
6) https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_17.html?showComment=1477254006372
7) https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-6-reflection-on-qualitative-and.html?showComment=1477255534027
8) https://u1wdx0i7.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-theme6.html#comment-form
9) https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/10/62-qualitative-and-case-study-research.html
10) https://u1dn0y6t.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-reflection-theme-6.html?showComment=1477322590132

Comments on theme 5

1) https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme5-blog-post-2-design-research.html#comment-form
2) https://u1gixy4z.blogspot.se/2016/10/after-theme-5-design-research.html#comment-form
3) https://u1bauz11.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-reflection.html#comment-form
4) https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-52.html#comment-form
5) https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-6-qualitative_72.html#comment-form
6) https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-design-research-post-2.html?showComment=1476791153941
7) https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5-reflection-on-design-research.html?showComment=1476792066041
8) https://u1wdx0i7.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-5.html?showComment=1476799004798
9) https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/10/52-reflection-design-research.html?showComment=1476801845477
10) https://u1dn0y6t.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-reflection-theme-5.html?showComment=1476802812149

Reflection theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

During this week, we had a lecture and a seminar covering the aspects of qualitative and case study research. During the lecture Hanna Hasselqvist talked about her study: ”A car-free year: Exploring sustainable transportation practices through a qualitative study”. During class I raised the question of whether she had considered including commercial partners, how the study was financed and if she perceived her research as being interdisciplinary. 

The lecture increased my understanding of how different actors can benefit from the results of the research and how the researcher has to change the perspective to include different view- and focal points. I can imagine it being challenging to juggle the discrepancy between the public and the academia as well as the political and commercial aspects. During the lecture I also learned the difference between the terms multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary. When a study is multidisciplinary, the researchers comes from different background and they wear the ”hats” of their respective field of conduct. One example would be a design research study where one of the researchers is a child psychologist and one researcher is a computer scientist. With an interdisciplinary approach, the same person is contributing to several disciplines, but there is still a distinction between the different fields of conduct. With a transdisciplinary approach on the other hand, the borders are erased and the researchers involved aims at creating knowledge that move beyond a specific research discipline or subject. During this week’s lecture I also got a greater insight in how much work that needs to be put into planning for and recruiting participants for research studies. Analysing the data that were collected as a part of the study seemed very time-consuming as well.

During the seminar I learnt that case studies are especially valuable in situations were one does not have sufficient information or know a subject well enough to formulate a research question. Ilias explained during the seminar that it is not always the answer to the question that is the aim of a design research study, but rather to come up with questions. This was an interesting shift in perspective for me. This was also something that I felt could be applied to the research paper that I choose for this theme. When we discussed the questions given for this theme, my group talked about how it sometimes can be hard to distinguish if the study is purely qualitative or if it counts as a design research study. The particularly paper that we discussed examined nine different case companies, within different fields.  I think what confused me was the width of the subjects covered, as I imagine case studies to focus more on the specifics. During our discussion we settled on that it in fact was a case study, since the question in hand were examined in depth (social media), even though the outset were more general (nine companies with different prerequisites). We also talked about it being a strategic choice to increase the generalizability of the study by including a lot of different setting for the theory to be adopted to.

Comments on theme 4

1) https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4-blog-post-1-quantitative.html?showComment=1476086480112
2) https://u1gixy4z.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-theme-4-quantitative-research.html?showComment=1476088247924
3) https://u1bauz11.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-4-reflection.html?showComment=1476088944889 4) https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/10/second-blog-post-theme-4-quantitative.html?showComment=1476089732511
5) https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/09/42.html?showComment=1476090807851
6) https://u1818rgq.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-post-2.html?showComment=1476091966373
7) https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.se/2016/10/theme-4reflection-quantitative-research.html?showComment=1476093184533
8) https://u1wdx0i7.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-theme-4.html?showComment=1476100581918
9) https://u1c051gg.blogspot.se/2016/09/42-quantitative-research-reflection-310.html?showComment=1475937569788#c8466948541941779978
10) https://u1dn0y6t.blogspot.se/2016/10/post-reflection-theme-4.html?showComment=1476136054627

Reflection on theme 5: Design research

During this week’s lecture we were given an overview of the design research method, and during the seminar we furthered discussed the questions answered in the pre-post. I contributed by asking questions that included: what is the most important outcome of the research? Would it be possible to reproduce the Ferneaus and Tholander study? How does design research fits in with the theoretical framework given by Gregor for the theme Research and Theory? 

During the seminar we discussed if the data that derived from testing the prototypes would be considered as empirical data, but Anders Lundström stressed that it was mainly the data from the pre-study that were to be considered as the empirical data, which differentiates from what I wrote in the first blog post. We also talked about what the focus for the study "Differentiated Driving Range" was; conducting a reality analysis hence creating and showing a richer picture. During the seminar my group discussed whether the result was supposed to generate insights on the process or the system generated? For the paper "Differentiated Driving Range" the ultimate aim was to create a better situation for the driver of the electrical cars – hence a more practical approach compared to the process-oriented. For the paper "Finding design qualities in a tangible programming space", the empirical data constituted of video footage. In that case, the study can be reproduced to a greater extent, since other scholars can analyse the material. 

As concerning the replicability of design studies, we discussed in our groups that as attitudes towards technology change and as the technological development progresses it could actually be hard to reproduce a design study. To illustrate, we talked about the programming study. When Fernaeus and Tholander conducted the research, children were not as used to technology as they are today having been brought up with iPads in their hands. This changes the conditions for the research in a major way. The question also arises whether it is necessary to replicate design research. What is the ultimate purpose? Are we interested in determining an answer to a universal question where the answer will always be true? If we instead shift the focus to trying the depict a cultural phenomena, and instead look at research as a snapshot of a historical context and the researchers prior experience – we have a more realistic picture. 

During the seminar, Anders addressed the question of design research having a somewhat unfair reputation of being less scientific compared to the hard sciences. He shifted the perspective by saying that one also has to look at the data in the hard sciences, as it is ultimately created in an artificial setting. The data is not "true" in itself, but has been exposed to human interference in the process of gathering and analysing it. What happens when all hard science is based on data that is created by people? It obscures the truth. When you calculate on a math problem, the solution always has to be the same. If the answer is wrong, its not up for discussion, it is simply wrong. In social studies on the other hand, the product of reproducibility is not to have the same outcome. The ONE human answer does not exist. What surprised me during the seminar was the new research mention, that recently had emerged and showed the difficulties of reproducing hard sciences. Anders mentioned that the researchers had gotten a similar result in only one third of the projects and how this had shaken the research community. 

Knowledge today is different, from ten years ago. It is a evolving and growing process, were new things and aspects are constantly added. My interpretation is that design research simply tries to answer the question of what our understanding is today. Bengt Molander described the idea of knowledge production as follows: "Knowledge is when our attention is directed towards something that we never thought about before." Anders mentioned how this imposed a simple rule of thumb for him. When I am conducting research, am I bringing attention to something that is unknown to the research community? One concept that I grasped during the week was the relation between grounded theory and empirical data. With grounded theory, you investigate a research question with an open mind, collect data and then go back again and build around it. The empirical data is the method used. Empirical data does not ultimately equal research. As Anders thoroughly stated: "Collecting data is not research". He highlighted SCB as an examples of an institute that collects data but are not conducting research.  

During the lecture, Ylva Fernaeus stressed that design research is not interdisciplinary, which I found a bit confusing. Since the artefacts’ position in history, its geographical location, as well as the social and cultural context has such a big impact on the research at large – does that not make the method at least somewhat interdisciplinary? 

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

The article ”The care.data consensus? A qualitative analysis of opinions expressed on Twitter” was first published in September 2015 in the paper BMC Public Health, which holds an impact factor of 2.209. During 2014, a public awareness campaign was launched by NHS England, about the care.data project, where data from patients’ medical records are transferred and stored on a central database. The study aims at identifying and describing the range of opinions expressed on Twitter regarding the project, during a defined period of time. The data were collected by the NCapture tool for NVivo and the method used was qualitative content analysis. The authors stress that this method enabled them to conduct a more detailed analysis, in comparison to other methods such as sentiment analysis and coding algorithms.

The data set were first checked to ensure that it only contained public tweets. The tweets were then presented anonymously and names of individuals and organisations were replaced with profession or type (where known). A grounded theory method was used, as the tweets were read in sequential order, and coded iterative to an evolving list of themes. The authors found 50 sub-themes, which were organised into nine overarching, key themes:

•        Informed consent and the default ”opt-in”
•        Trust, privacy and data security
•        Involvement of private companies
•        Legal issues and GPs’ concerns
•        Communication failure and confusion about care.data
•        Delayed implementation
•        Patient-centeredness
•        Potential of care.data
•        Ideal model of implementation

The tweets were not counted for each theme, and the purpose of the study was rather to highlight areas of consensus and disagreement. The authors stressed that counting the data could result in bias, as it could be misinterpreted. They also claimed that the most frequently mentioned theme does not imply that it is the most important one. The benefit of using the method is the speed of execution and the possibility to quickly gain insights regarding a topic. The researchers showed some examples tweets for each theme, making the research easy to grasp. One limitation includes the lack of guidelines describing how the themes were chosen.  A mixed-methods approach could have enabled the paper to complement the data and give it a more representative overview.

The following issues makes me interpret the research as less valid and reliable:

• Contributing tweets may lie more heavily on one side of the debate than another.
• The tweeters did not approve the use of their tweets in research, which raises ethical questions in regard to the collection of data.
• The researchers did not manage to determine the demographics of the Twitter users, but it is likely that they did not capture tweets from marginalized groups.
• The results do not account for the population as a whole, as only the persons aware of the issue would contribute to the discussion.

The article "Community change: Water management through the use of social media, the case of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin” was first published in December 2014 in the paper Public Relations Review, which holds an impact factor of 1.249. The method employed is case study, and a combination of qualitative interviews and content analysis of media and agency reports have been conducted as part of the research.

Case study is a research strategy that aims at studying a phenomenon in real life using empirical evidence. The goal is to understand ”the dynamics present within single setting”. A case study can involve studying a single case or multiple cases, and there are often various levels of analysis within it. Case study as research method differentiates from pure qualitative research as it does not only rely on qualitative data to provide an answer to the research question, but quantitative data can also be used. A case study can be conducted in order to provide description of a phenomenon, to test a theory or to generate a new theory. The method is highly iterative, and the researcher move between the steps of gathering data, processing it and comparing it to theory. The dynamics of the process, often leads to new insights being generated, resulting in a need for new data. This process yields an increase in empirical validity. An important part of conducting case studies is comparing the concepts, theory and hypotheses with extant literature, which also increases internal validity and generalizability.

The research objective is clearly stated in the beginning, and goes as follow: How has technology in this specific case been used to connect with previously alienated stakeholder and has it met the needs of the community? The previous literature connected the research question is briefly described. The authors do state that limited attention previously has been focused on communication theory in depth through the use of social media. They also state that that agenda setting through social media is a previously neglected area of literature. No other case studies were used in comparison. Multiple data collections methods have been chosen, and the study combines netnography observations with an interview conducted with a representative from the Murray-Darling Basin Authority. It is unclear if the netnography have influenced the questions asked at the interview. The author received funding from the Murray-Darlin Basin Futures CRN for conducting the research, which raises the question of the researcher’s trustworthiness. In my opinion, theoretical saturation have not been achieved.

Comments to theme 3

https://u1cq6h0z.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3reflection-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1475477624542
https://u1gixy4z.blogspot.se/2016/09/after-theme-3-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1475478759928
https://u12vkokq.blogspot.se/2016/09/reflections-on-theme-3-research-and.html?showComment=1475480069333
https://u1kq1ay0.blogspot.se/2016/09/second-blog-post-theme-3-research-and.html?showComment=1475481027131
https://u1mv5a16.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3-second-blog-post.html?showComment=1475501600409
https://scarsickbg.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3-blog-post-2-research-and-theory.html?showComment=1475502542764
https://u1h4muxc.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-32-reflection.html?showComment=1475508487174 https://u1j8du7c.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-32.html?showComment=1475510695332 https://u1eqtjc8.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1475511500348 https://u1bauz11.blogspot.se/2016/09/theme-3-reflection.html?showComment=1475516346055