Methodology - Thread 2
Briefly describe your methodological choice & Give at least 3 sound reasons for your methodological choice.
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For this research project, I will use a qualitative, interactive research method. This will allow me to get a descriptive understanding of how parents are using the web during their child’s college selection process. It will describe the experience of these people. I plan to conduct semi-structured interviews of parents to understand how they are using the web.
3 reasons for my methodological choice:
- This is a fairly new area of research. Because of this, the important variables that could be used to test relationships have not been identified for this research area. This study would help identify some important variables for others in the future to study.
- With this study I am trying to describe how parents use the web. In order to reach this description, I need to talk with parents and have them tell me, in their own words, how they use the web.
- This methodology choice logically fits with how to gather information about how parents are using the web.
posted by Jaclyn @ 1:52 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
Hi Jaclyn!
I agree with you that using information to solicit information from parents will be very useful. Having part of the interview structured, will allow for some consistency and get the same kinds of data from everybody which might enable you to make comparisons. By also having some of it unstructured, you will be able to get some more unique information that you might not expect.
When I think of your study, I start thinking of your random population. Would you use a regional school--like WSU students...private schools, public schools, PAC-10, ivy league etc. I imagine parents at different types of institutes might use it differently. I laugh if your random sample ended up choosing an international student in say, Djibouti whose parent's didn't speak English. ; )
I also think about how you would conduct interviews--by phone? face-to-face, video stream? The big plus about interviews is that it's more personal. Phone seems like the only reasonable expectation to interview enough parents, but makes it less personal.
With all that said in support of your decision, I do wonder at the same time, if parents are so internet saavy, than soliciting information via internet seems quite fair and it might be much more efficient?
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