Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Technologiesevolve.Technicalsupportcanbeexpensive.Newtechnologies
aredevelopedeveryday.Oftenbasictechnologiescanmeetaspecificneed.For
thesereasonsandmore,it'simportanttothinkthroughawiderangeofissues,
both technical and non-technical, before embarking on an online study.
Our advice is to do some information gathering and assessment before
determining which technology is best for you:
•
Speak with colleagues both in and out of your particular field.
•
Review what others have done by looking at a variety of publications and
online listings:
- What technology did they use?
- What challenges did they experience?
- What do they feel they missed due to their choices?
•
Conduct a self-assessment of your own level of technical skill.
Yourreviewoftheseissues,alongwithyourevaluationofthevariousavailabletech-
nologies,bothaswe'veoutlinedinthisbookaswellaselsewhere,shouldenableyou
tomakeaneducatedandinformeddecisionaboutwhichtechnologyisbestforyou.
To be clear, the preceding comments are not meant to suggest that
researchers should relinquish any hope of conducting research online. On the
contrary,weofferthisbookpreciselysothatyoucanmakeeducateddecisions
and get started with ease. The purpose of this text is to help you, the reader,
avoidthemistakeswe'vemadeorwitnessedovertheyears,andtoprovideyou
with some of the practical tips we've learned through experience, so that you
have at your disposal what you need to make educated decisions.
Data collection
Thereasonwedevelopresearchinstrumentsissothatwecancollectdatathat
will help us develop a new understanding. To that end, when using a technol-
ogy for data collection, it's important to keep in mind whether or not the
technology will facilitate data collection, management and analysis. Some
applications, such as mIRC, allow you to create logs as text-only files. These
logs are easily identifiable as #yourchannel_160 222007.log (http://www.nic.fi/
~mauvinen/mircstats/mircstatsfaq.html#multifiles, accessed 9 April 2007). In
addition, you can search through log files, and then prepare them in whatever
manner is necessary to access them through an analytical program. For exam-
ple, using an application like HyperResearch might necessitate separating key
sections of the discussion with a tilde (~) to make coding and analysis more
manageable. In a given study, there may be statements from different partici-
pantsthatshouldbeseparatedforcodingpurposes,oraneedtobreakafiledue
to changes in the discussion thread or different dates. The point to consider is
whether or not data are easily cleaned and analyzed, or whether there are
complex steps or translations that need to be completed prior to analysis.
