Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
4
USING EMAIL FOR
DATA COLLECTION
Chapter summary
•
Overview
•
Email clients
•
Listservs for group discussions (focus groups)
•
Mail storage/management
•
Using email for interviewing, focus groups, and surveying
Electronic mail (email) is perhaps the oldest method of computer-based
communication and is widely available in one form or another. It can be used
for one-to-one, one-to-many and many-to-many communication. In online
social research, the use of email has been one of the traditional methods
for soliciting and collecting data for studies. Typical uses have been the distri-
bution and collection of surveys, conducting interviews and conducting focus
groups. These three roles have distinct needs from email.
•
Surveysareformattedtextdistributedbyonesendertomultiplerecipients.
The multiple recipients reply (if they do) to the sender and the interaction
ends, though follow-up is possible.
•
Interviews consist of an exchange of multiple messages between (usually)
two users.
•
Focus groups usually take the form of a discussion initiated by a sender
with several recipients and may involve many exchanges and possible
topic changes.
Beforegettingintothosethreetopicsfurther,wewilldescribethevariousemail
technologies and email software applications with the aim of considering how
they apply to the collection of data.
Email technology background
Email is a “store and forward” technology. Messages are composed by the
sender and transmitted to a mail server and, after perhaps several hops,
