INF1240 Research Blog

The lecture's discussion about ethics issues such as the Tuskegee Syphilis Study and the issue of using the cells of Henrietta Lacks demonstrate the shortcomings of the reactive nature of research ethical guidelines. During the trials and while rights were being violated, there was no recourse for the participants to protect themselves.   The reactive nature of ethics guidelines is especially challenging in the internet age. It is encouraging that ethics issues are currently more visible and the research community is more aware of the need for guidelines. The Anabo et al. article from this week provides a good overview of some of the issues with establishing research ethics in the internet age. They mention that research ethics may not be prepared to protect participants in internet research. Many ethical guidelines are rooted in biomedical research (Anabo et al.). The same frameworks are being applied to internet social science research. Because of the differences between biomed...

Hi everyone, I hope all your research proposal tweaking and peer review prepping is going well.  In this week's blog post I wanted to touch on some new and interesting concepts discussed in the readings and the pre lecture videos. Previous to this course, I had the experience of working on a molecular epidemiology research project where was able to learn about ethics in qualitative research as well as the process of applying to receive ethics approval. Even thought I do have some knowledge when it comes to ethics, I really enjoyed expanding my perspective on the topic through learning about ethics in qualitative research and in social media. Specifically, I really enjoyed learning about how there are different ethic boards for different population groups, such as Indigenous Peoples (OCAP) as well as the importance of considering group vulnerability when creating a research design. I feel that considering psychological vulnerability may be important in my own research, especially in...

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...

 Hi everyone,  Bias is one of my favourite research topics to discuss and I really enjoyed reading your thoughts and insights about bias in your own research. I hope to continue this conversation in my post, by going over biases that could occur in my own research.  A key part of my research methods is measuring type of contact each participant has with individuals in their social network, as well as their perception of social support with these individuals. Because I want to measure if there is a change in social support perception when contact is more digital vs in person, I proposed a data collection method, where participants would answer questions about contact type and social support before and during the pandemic.  Because this study would be starting after the pandemic began, I'm concerned that participants may be subject to recall bias, especially when asked about their relationships before the pandemic. One way I'm thinking of decreasing this chance of bias...

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...

Hi everyone, I think that bias discussion in this weeks' lectures is relevant to my research topic because I will need to account for bias in my project. The issues with bias in qualitative research listed in the slides are applicable. It will definitely be helpful to engage in reflexivity to determine biases that could affect my study. As a member of the Moroccan Jewish community, I already have my own views on memories that should be preserved and views on how interviewees will respond to questions. I will need to be conscious when crafting questions and conducting the interviews not to steer the conversation toward issues that I think are important. One suggestion from the lecture was using bracketing. It will also be useful to bracket at every stage of the research process and constantly question my findings. Accounting for bias and bracketing will be an ongoing process throughout my research project.   Does anyone else have thoughts on bias? Can you foresee any immediate ...

 Hello everyone, I hope that everyone was able to finish up their assignment without too much trouble.  I found that one of the challenging but also helpful aspects of the assignment was that we needed to cut down the assignment to fit into two pages. I found this challenging because there was seemingly a lot of information that needed to fit into two pages. At the same time, the size of the assignment allowed me to really hone in on what is most essential to my topic of study.  The readings from this week focused on how to gather data. Luker lays out a number of the challenges. One such challenge is a long process for gathering a proper sample. Additionally, the concept of operationalizing the topic so that it fits well into the data gathering process seems challenging. I do think that making assignment 2 concise will help with the operationalizing the topic. This seems like a challenge for qualitative research because we are not gathering specific data but (in my case) ...

 Hi everyone,  I'm happy to report that I have finalized my research question, as well as my hypothesis. I decided to focus my research on understand if decreased face to face contact influences social structures. This lead to a more focused research question:  does perception of social support increase or decrease when in person contact is minimized? My hypothesis is currently:  social support is decreased when in person contact is minimized, which I based off of results from other studies which were similar to my research topic.  One detail in my methods that I hope to iron out, and would appreciate feedback on is, currently I've categorized type of contact the study participant has with an individual as  in person/face to face or not in person/digital communication.  However, as I was writing my assignment, I realized that communication forms, such as zoom or FaceTime can use face to face interaction while still being digital. Th...

Hi peeps,  So, as I wrote the first draft of this week’s assignment, I found this week’s readings very pertinent to my research. I am currently at the stage where I am moving from formulating a research question to looking for appropriate research methods. As you may already know, I think I will be using a questionnaire to conduct my research. And while most of this week’s readings provided information on quantitative research methods and considerations, I found some points particularly relevant. For example, it was helpful to know that face-to-face inquiries may be useful to ensure that participants are completing questionnaires as expected and that highly structured surveys can restrict the responses from respondents (Knight, 2002). These are considerations I will have to be aware of as I finalize my research method.  This week I struggled to find a way to define key terms in my second assignment because there are so many different types of online learning formats offere...

Time has flown by so fast! Because I want to focus more of my energy on the assignment due on Friday, I will keep this week’s post brief. This week, I focused on searching for and reading up relevant articles related to my research topic. As I read various journal articles around the topic of online learning, I discovered the research by Dr. Randy Garrison was often referenced. Over the last two decades, this professor has developed the concept of community of inquiry introduced by John Dewey and has developed a framework that identifies important conditions needed for successful blended learning in higher education. I found this framework to be extremely useful in shaping and narrowing my research question. As a result, tweaking my research question a little bit, I want to look at how in-class semi-anonymous online platforms can help improve cohesiveness among students. I think I will be using Dr. Garrison’s work to frame my research work. Also, after talking to our teacher today, I r...

 Hello everyone,  I think that I have decided on a research question. Please let me know if you have any recommendations. My research question will be: How do museums incorporate diasporic memory into Museum exhibits? I will approach this question from the Moroccan Jewish perspective. My hypothesis is that the Moroccan diasporic memory will be have many similarities to the realities of Jewish life in Morocco. However, there will also be significant differences, namely that Moroccans who emigrated from Morocco will remember life in Morocco through rose coloured glasses, especially with regard to anti-semitism.  I would like to incorporate a study through either a formal or informal interview process that will track the things that Moroccan Jews living in Toronto believe are the most important part of history and culture to preserve. I think that an informal interview would be an easier way to do this as I have experience conducting interviews with clients. I am a little wo...

 Hello fellow group member!  I've decided to commit to my research topic and my rough research question is "Has individual's perception of social support been influenced by changes in contact type during the COVID pandemic". I was considering a couple research methods for this topic, but at this point, I am thinking that qualitative research focused on a storytelling approach would be best. I'm also considering including a questionnaire in my study in addition to storytelling, as I imagine this would be a good way to gather key themes and trends.  That's all from my this week, I would love to know you feedback! Kaitlin 

I  ended up doing a complete 180 in my research topic this week (I hope it’s not too late!) and decided to focus on how students can increase their learning in virtual learning environments. This topic was partially inspired by experiencing full-on remote learning these last few weeks but also draws from my previous experience teaching and tutoring middle and high school students. There are various pros and cons to in-classroom learning and remote learning. In-classroom teaching has the advantage of being able to visually witness students’ and instructors’ non-vocal behavior to serve as cues for learning and teaching. For example, if several students are showing puzzled expressions on their faces, students may be more willing to ask questions in the classroom or instructors may realize students are not understanding the content and will explain the content further. The current format of online teaching, on the other hand, does not wholly support this kind of non-verbal interactio...

 Hi everyone,  I hope everyone is doing well. I have to admit that I am finding the transition to complete online learning more difficult. I find that things that happen and things that are said in class are more difficult. I have been trying to print more things out such as readings and syllabi in order to have hard copies of things so hopefully this will help. I have begun doing more research and I was happy that in one of the first articles that I read about Moroccan culture, the first paragraph pointed me toward a scholar who is the leader in studying Moroccan culture. I am looking forward to taking out the book from the U of T library.  Luker has been helpful in narrowing down my question from an interest to an actual question. I definitely know what my interest is but it is broad. Creating links described in Luker Chapter 4, creating a link between "Moroccan Jews" and "Jewish life in Morocco." Using Luker's advice, I can narrow down some of the questions I...