On Monday the topic was Qualitative research and on Wednesday we discussed case study research.
Monday seminar
When discussing qualitative methodology, we talked about focus groups which I found interesting since I hadn't actually read any research paper that used this method.I could relate to the type of focus groups I have participated in myself when attending a few different commercial marketing research sessions.
However the implementation of focus groups may vary between research projects, groups may be small or large and so on.
Focus groups as a research method can be used to gain understanding about a wide range of views in detail, and perhaps also get a collected
view when the group reaches consensus, by letting participants freely discuss a matter.
This makes it possible to obtain more answers than for example a strictly formed questionnaire could.
On the negative side, there's a risk that someone in the group takes over the discussion.
In order to gain some deeper understanding, I've read through this article Focus Group Methodology: Introduction and history
It includes a few examples, for instance one from a marketing research by the Coca-Cola Company,
on how a marketing disaster could have been prevented, had they only listened to the participants of the focus group in research performed prior to the launch of the new product.
It further suggests that focus group study is suitable for health and social science researchers. Media technology research is often on the subject social media and human-computer interaction and
is therefore closely connected with the above, making focus groups suitable for our field as well.
It brings up some further negative sides of focus groups:
- In some cases, the discussion may not go deep enough
- All participants may not actively take part in the discussion
- Some topics are not suitable to discuss in this way
We added the qualitative research paper that I had chosen "Perceived connections between information and communication technology use and mental symptoms among young adults-a qualitative study" to the course wiki.
Wednesday seminar
This is where I got a clearer picture what defines a case study, and I understand that the research paper which was basically a literature study is somewhat different to the empirical case study, still,it was a very good match to the description by Eisenhardt in Building Theories from Case Study Research which I in preparation for this theme. It was great to get examples of different applications of the case study.
I realized that I had tried to explain the case study method only from the perspective of the literature study paper I had chosen, and to get some more general insight, I've also read through this (unpublished) paper on the subject from University of Texas by S. Soy.
She uses multiple sources to present the case study method and I think that this article could be a good resource for anyone who wants to engage in this type of research for their master thesis.
Even though I didn't actually learn many new facts from reading this after having read Eisenhardt and discussed it, it still confirms the conclusions we came to during the seminar. And it's naturally
always good to find multiple sources for information, something we should all understand by now.
So perhaps this short diplomatic summary of the case study method would be in place
They are complex because they are useful.
- Multiple sources of data
- Multiple cases
- Large amounts of data to analyze
Our group gave the first contribution to the description of what a case study is on the course wiki.
It must have been great since it's hardly been changed by the following groups?
Final word
It has been an interesting trip from Plato to modern research methodology and the knowledge I've gained from this course will certainly be put to use when it's time to do my master thesis. I want to thank everyone for the discussions around the many papers we've all read.
Hi Andreas!
SvaraRaderaI agree with you about the things you wrote about focus groups. I have also been in a lot of different focus groups but never did one myself. It can be as you say a negative side of focus groups such as all participants cannot be equally active. I feel that the person who will moderate the discussion should be aware of these factors and control the discussion discreetly. I also liked you example with coca-cola company which shows how focus groups can be useful in marketing strategy’s and in academic perspective.