For this assignment, I looked around a lot to find a suitable paper to base the questions on. I had a hard time finding a paper that would work for this assignment as I wasted a lot of time just trying to find one that actually used qualitative methods. Finally, I found the paper Game-Play Breakdowns and Breakthroughs: Exploring the Relationship Between Action, Understanding, and Involvement, published in the journal Human–Computer Interaction, Volume 30, 2015 - Issue 3-4 which has an impact factor of 3.7.
Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
In the abstract, the following sentence is found: Data included interviews, multiple observations of game-play, postplay cued interviews, and diary entries. The methods used are described quite well in the sentence. The authors first developed a set of theoretical claims representing suggested relationships between involvement and learning on the basis of previous literature, and later on assessed them though a critical examination of the data set retrieved though the previously mentioned methods. As the authors set out to find the relationship between user involvement and learning in games, the main benefit from using these methods is that the authors can get a deeper understanding of the relationship by not just collecting quantitative data which by itself does not really say much about why the data looks like it does. One of the main drawbacks is that it is quite hard to generalize the data as the participant count was rather low for the study, as only nine participants took part. However, it seems the participants differed in terms of age, gender and how they identified as gamers, which is great to try and make some form of generalization. Worth noting is that the aim with a case-study approach is not to make statistical generalization but to make analytical generalizations that expand theories.
What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I learned that by collecting multiple sources of data during the studies, building explanations and comparing across cases validity is increased, according to Yin (2009). I also learned that qualitative studies is not very common when it comes to HCI research, as I did look through a bunch of papers before I found this one, all of which only used quantitative methods. The authors did pilot studies with five participants before the actual study started in order to ensure that the lab and data collection were set up appropriately. The results of those sessions were not included in the main study. I had not really thought of pilot studies that much before, so that was new to me.
Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
Of course, the main problem here is that the number of participants was quite low which means that the results could have been skewed as it is hard to generalize the results of a population using such a small subset of participants.
Luckily, the paper that I chose for the first part of this assignment actually uses case studies, so I will continue the rest of this blog post with the same paper.
Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
A case study is something that is used to research to understand a certain situation instead of using loads of statistical data to try and form theories. It is useful for trying out theoretical models by using them in real world situations. It is not used to answer a question or explain a situation in its whole, but rather get more knowledge into the area in order to allow further elaboration and hypothesis creation on a subject.
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.
I found the table from the paper to be overly complex in order to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the paper I selected. Going through every step and analyzing the paper would also likely be way more than would fit into the 800 words of which I only have a few remaining. I suggest that this assignment could be moved into a single blog post in the future, were the task to remain. Regarding the strengths and weaknesses of my selected paper, see the previous questions in this blog post.
Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
In the abstract, the following sentence is found: Data included interviews, multiple observations of game-play, postplay cued interviews, and diary entries. The methods used are described quite well in the sentence. The authors first developed a set of theoretical claims representing suggested relationships between involvement and learning on the basis of previous literature, and later on assessed them though a critical examination of the data set retrieved though the previously mentioned methods. As the authors set out to find the relationship between user involvement and learning in games, the main benefit from using these methods is that the authors can get a deeper understanding of the relationship by not just collecting quantitative data which by itself does not really say much about why the data looks like it does. One of the main drawbacks is that it is quite hard to generalize the data as the participant count was rather low for the study, as only nine participants took part. However, it seems the participants differed in terms of age, gender and how they identified as gamers, which is great to try and make some form of generalization. Worth noting is that the aim with a case-study approach is not to make statistical generalization but to make analytical generalizations that expand theories.
What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I learned that by collecting multiple sources of data during the studies, building explanations and comparing across cases validity is increased, according to Yin (2009). I also learned that qualitative studies is not very common when it comes to HCI research, as I did look through a bunch of papers before I found this one, all of which only used quantitative methods. The authors did pilot studies with five participants before the actual study started in order to ensure that the lab and data collection were set up appropriately. The results of those sessions were not included in the main study. I had not really thought of pilot studies that much before, so that was new to me.
Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?
Of course, the main problem here is that the number of participants was quite low which means that the results could have been skewed as it is hard to generalize the results of a population using such a small subset of participants.
Luckily, the paper that I chose for the first part of this assignment actually uses case studies, so I will continue the rest of this blog post with the same paper.
Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.
A case study is something that is used to research to understand a certain situation instead of using loads of statistical data to try and form theories. It is useful for trying out theoretical models by using them in real world situations. It is not used to answer a question or explain a situation in its whole, but rather get more knowledge into the area in order to allow further elaboration and hypothesis creation on a subject.
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.
I found the table from the paper to be overly complex in order to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the paper I selected. Going through every step and analyzing the paper would also likely be way more than would fit into the 800 words of which I only have a few remaining. I suggest that this assignment could be moved into a single blog post in the future, were the task to remain. Regarding the strengths and weaknesses of my selected paper, see the previous questions in this blog post.
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar