Week 3 - Kaitlin

Hi everyone, 

I've started to form my research question and would love to hear any feedback!

One area that I am extremely interested in exploring is if and how social networks have changed during the current pandemic. In order to narrow the scope, I was thinking of focusing my question on how people's social support (one's ability to go to someone for emotional or physical support) has been influenced by changes in forms of contact (in person to not in person). I think it would be really interesting to see if and how less in person contacts influences an individuals social support. 

Let me know what you guys think, and if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them. 

Kaitlin 


Comments

  1. WenSeptember 28, 2020 at 10:19 AM

    This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  2. WenSeptember 28, 2020 at 10:20 AM

    Hi Kaitlin,

    It's a great idea! I would love to become one of the first interviewees if you need any~

    From the phrasing of your question, I'm guessing it will take a quantitative approach (asking "how" instead of "why") and I bet there are a great many secondary sources you can refer to! I recently saw this research about pandemic and social media data by an iSchool faculty (but it's more focused on COVID's social impact). https://ischool.utoronto.ca/news/mining-social-media-data-to-see-shifting-public-reactions-to-covid-19/

    As for your research question, I think it's vital to define and identify "social support" by data filtering or conducting surveys, etc.

    My guess is for most people who are familiar with technology, their social support shifted online and most of us has well adapted to it. I think there would be surprising findings about those who did not master social media before the pandemic, but those people will also be hard to approach safely at this special time. Good luck ;-)

    Wen

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. KaitlinSeptember 30, 2020 at 2:29 PM

      Hi Wen,

      Thank you so much for the volunteer to participate, I really appreciate your enthusiasm. I agree, I imagine this will be targeted towards quantitative research methods. Based on the readings this week, I'm also considering Mixed research methods as I imagine collecting participants stories and experiences would provide greater insight into this topic.

      Let me know what you think!
      Kaitlin

      Delete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 11 - Kaitlin

 Hi everyone,  In preparation for the upcoming research proposal, I've been closely analyzing my current methods and reflecting on possible improvements. One improvement was provided by a TA, who suggest that I conduct my research in the form of a longitudinal study, with a study period beginning during the pandemic and ending after the pandemic and social distances measures have ceased. I think this is an incredibly good suggestion, as this type of study would reduce recall bias, as participants would no longer need to remember what kind of social interactions were occurring pre-pandemic.  As always, any additional thoughts, comments or questions are welcome!  Kaitlin  
Read more

Week 6: confounding bias and research methodology (Erina)

I found that last week’s assignment helped organize and formalize my research question and research design framework. What I noticed while I was writing up my assignment last week, however, was that I need to start fleshing out my proposed research method.   I intend to use a survey to gather information on student’s perceptions of the online course they are taking. One difficulty I am currently facing is that I lack enough statistical knowledge to understand the different statistical tools used in the journal articles I am reading. At the moment, I am focusing on reading up on studies that used small sample sizes because my sample size will not be large. I hope to get ideas on appropriate statistical methods this way. Also, this week’s lecture brought my attention to an important issue with my research question: confounding bias. Because I will be examining student’s experiences with online class, confounding bias will be a problem if I do not appropriately select my test...
Read more

Week 7 - Erina

One of the readings this week showed that context plays a role in whether internet users are comfortable having their information or content they post online used for research purposes (Fiesler & Proferes, 2018). I found I agreed with a lot of the respondents in this study (e.g. being willing to have researchers use your information if you can remain anonymous, being aware that you will not have full authority with whatever you post online). However, it was alarming to see that the academic field is still in the earlier stages of developing a research ethics framework when collecting data from the web and that most Twitter users were not aware that researchers use Tweets for their work. Related to that note, I realize I will need to obtain consent from the professor AND students before I start observing the student's level of participation in an online class. I will primarily use a survey to gather student's perceptions of their learning experience. For the survey, I will...
Read more