CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
3.3 R ESEARCH P ROCEDURES
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professional opinions and offers specific explanations, showing the feelings and understanding of the interviewee on something.
The possible mistaken factors in the research process are called “threats to validity”. While in qualitative research, threats to validity cannot be recognized ahead and be excluded through some techniques (Chen, 2006). That is because the object in qualitative research is not individual objective substance separated from the subject. It cannot be recognized or confirmed just in one-way, and can only be reconstructed in the interaction with its subject. Therefore, validity can only be inspected here and now or gradually in the process.
There are several specific methods to inspect validity and exclude the unwanted.
This research adopts the triangulation. Triangulation means that the same conclusion will be inspected on different persons in the case in different methods, background and time, in order to inspect the established conclusion through possible channels, thus to seek the most validity on the conclusion (Chen, 2006). The most typical inspecting method is the combination of interviewing and observing. The observation shows us the behavior of interviewees and the interviews help us to learn the motivations of their behavior. To conduct relevant inspections, the researcher can not only inspect the observed results in the interviews, but also inspect the interviewing results in observation.
3.3 Research Procedures
3.3.1. Participate in the Observing Process
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children’s home, observing children using digital media in the form of fieldwork. The other is to observe the documents children put in their blogs and the interaction they conduct in blogs with others.
3.3.1.1 Observation at Home
Given that home is where children use media mostly and use computers to surf the Internet most of the time, we should enter children’s home to learn blog activities featuring children and observe the network they form in the activities.
3.3.1.2 Observation Fields
In terms of research fields, this research makes children blogs as observation fields. At present a blog can be divided into four main parts: personal information, albums, journals and the message board. Through the observation of researcher and children’s narration when doing focus group research, this research focuses on the albums and journals in blogs.
3.3.2 Interview
This research studies children’s blog experience through interviews, in order to know how children create self-images and interact with others. Researcher adopts semi-structured interviews, because this can lead to surprising answers and maintain the openness of research questions. Therefore researcher needn’t ask questions strictly according to the interview outline. Once new information appears, researcher can adjust interview outline thereafter, which is beneficial to catch the subtle differences among individual cases.
It lasted around 1.5 hours for each interview. Sometimes parents would accompany their children and sometimes children themselves received the interviews.
The interviewing places included cram schools, homes or fast food restaurants where children would stay.
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In the process of the interview, the researcher plays a role of a positive listener, listening attentively to the interviewee’s blog using experience and trying to understand it. In the listening process, involvement or interruptions should be avoided as possible. According to what the interviewee was saying, the researcher should soon judge whether there is more to continue or extend and ask “What’s your opinion?” or
“Can you tell me what happened?” at the right time, thus letting the interviewee offering more information. According to what the interviewee was saying in the process, the researcher should make some gestures to mean the attention and response.
When the interviewee feels the attention of the researcher, there will be deeper narration on the experience.
3.3.3 Documentary Data
In this research, researcher designed a ‘Media Usage Diary’ (Appendix 5) for participants to record their daily media usage. In the beginning, researcher explains
“media” for participants, then tell them to record each media usage every day. On the
‘Media Usage Diary’ participants can indicate their happiness index while using each medium. Five smiling faces (☺) represent the happiest feeling when using the medium.
‘Media Usage Diary’ can help researcher to study how media involve in children’s everyday life.
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Date Sunday, September 27th, 2009
Time Media Content/ Activity Place With
Whom 4.Listen to the music
Study room Brother ☺☺☺☺
19:00- 19:10
Mobile phone Texting Living room Friend ☺☺☺
19:20-
Living room Family members
☺
Figure 3.1: Betty’s Media Usage Diary 3.2.2 Case Study
The case selection of qualitative research is based on the uniqueness of the cases.
It is supposed that researchers should select cubic cases, thus to describe real multi faces of society. To select suitable cases, researchers mostly base on their experience or the understanding of theories to design the sampling (Hu Youhui, Yao Meihua,
4 Wretch (Chinese: 無名小站) is a Taiwanese community web site. In Chinese, its name means Anonymous Site or Nameless Station. It is the most well-known blog community in Taiwan with thousands of users registered. Wretch provides free album, blog, and Bulletin Board System hosting services. (Retrieved June 20th ,2010 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wretch_website)
5 Crazyracing Kartrider (Chinese: 跑跑卡丁車) is an online multiplayer racing game that has managed to get well over 230 million users playing. (Retrieved June 20th ,2010 from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crazyracing_Kartrider)
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1996).
Qualitative research is often in changes, so any new information may break the temporary assumption. The sampling strategy will accordingly be adjusted with the development of research (Hu & Yao, 1996). As the method of qualitative research is applied to motive research objects, it is possible for researchers to adopt suitable sampling strategy as to reality in different research phases. To maintain the openness and compliance of research questions, flexibility and mobility of the research, this research adopts snowball sampling strategy to select the cases.
Snowball strategy is also named chain strategy, applied to the situation of uncertain parent substance (Babbie, 1998). Researchers should have a quite good knowledge of the known blog users, and then they can find other interviewees through them (Hu & Yao, 1996).
Researcher looks for children interviewees with Internet experience among relatives and students researcher have taught. Cases selected through such procedure are not so typical, but can offer very useful information. Therefore it is often adopted by exploring research (Babbie, 1998). In the beginning of the research, from June to July 2009, using the focus group method, invited 12 children in 3 groups who knew each other to have an informal discussion. Thus free group interaction atmosphere was created for children to speak frankly and share their experience. During this phase, researcher sets up the core themes according to the experience children shared on using digital media, and then sought suitable cases for further research.
Researcher conducted the first face-to-face interview on 11 August 2009. Before each interview, researcher would explain the research orientation to interviewed children and their parents, and record the interviewing process with a recorder. As children are below 18 years old, researcher signed agreement with parents, promising
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to keep the interviewees’ identity secret. The interviews would only begin after the interviewees agreed.
These two participants were sixth grade elementary school students, aged 11-12.
These two participants, the girl used to be researcher’s cram school student; the boy was recommended by family friend. Both participants’ parents admitted researcher’s field study in their house and agree researcher to study participants’ blog and conduct the interviews.
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Assumed Name Betty
Interview 1. August 11th, 2009, 14:00-15:00 at Betty’s cram school 2. November 17th, 2009, 17:00-19:00 at Betty’s home 3. June 22nd, 2010, 12:00-14:00 at McDonalds
Observation at Home
1. November 17th, 2009, 14:00-17:00 2. November 25th, 2009, 21:00-22:30 Media Usage Diary September 18th ~ October 1st, 2009
Age 11 years old (sixth-grade student in elementary school) Gender Female
Resident Taipei county, Yungho
Family Members Father, 41 years old, an engineer
Mother, 39 years old, a nursing attendant Brother, 6 years old, a kindergarten student Time of Using
Internet
6 years, since 1st grade in elementary school Time of Using Blogs 4 years, since 3rdt grade in elementary school Blog- Album
Blog- Journal
Figure 3.2: Background of participant- Betty
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Assumed Name: Star
Interview 1. October 9th, 2009, 13:30-14:30 at Star’s home 2. November 14th, 2009, 14:00-16:00 at Star’s home 3. November 28th, 2009, 16:00-17:30 at Star’s home 4. June 25th, 2010, 10:20-13:40 at McDonalds Observation at
Home
1. October 9th, 2009, 14:30-16:30 2. November 14th, 2009, 16:00-17:30 3. November 28th, 2009, 13:30-16:00 Media Usage Diary October 11th ~ October 24th, 2009
Age: 12 years old (sixth-grade student in elementary school) Gender: Male
Resident: Taoyuan county, Bade
Family Members Father, 54 years old, a recycling depot owner Mother, 40 years old, a worker in recycling depot
Sister, 10 years old, a 4th grade student in elementary school Time of Using
Internet
6 years, since 1st grade in elementary school Time of Using blogs 2 years, since 5th grade in elementary school Blog- Album
Blog- Journal
Figure 3.3: Background of participant- Star