During today's lecture, the teacher explained the research based on "A car-free year project"which explores sustainable transportation practices through a qualitative study. There are several qualitative method used in the research, including conducting the interviews, making the observations and doing the case study. However, whether it is a case study remains the controversial topic because of its ambiguity. Personally, I think the research counts as the case study qualitative method. "How can people live without the car?" is the first question popping up people's mind when doing the experiment. This is the question that we cannot answer right away or give a definite answer within seconds. It is something you don't understand well enough and need to formulate the research question to define the case study, not to answer the question but to come up with the question to do the research.
From the interview part, the research is based on the monthly interviews with the families combined with aberrations. There are six elements of social practices including infrastructure, products&services, norms&policies, knowledge&skills&values to analyze. However, the challenging part in the research is difficult to anonymize data of few participants when the project is public.
The result of the research is based on three essential concepts: to increase understanding of car-free transportation practices, to convey the important design considerations for supporting sustainable transportation and to design concepts and input from other stakeholders.
Furthermore, we also discussed three disciplinary research concepts during the lecture: interdisciplinary, trans-disciplinary, and multidisciplinary research. I think the research is based on the multidisciplinary method which combines and involved several academic disciplines or professional specializations in an approach to a topic or problem. In short, a multidisciplinary approach involves drawing appropriately from multiple disciplines to redefine problems outside normal boundaries and reach solutions based on a new understanding of complex situations.
The paper I have chosen from is A Case Study on Integrating Social Media in an Online Graduate Youth Development Course from MERLOT Journal of Online Learning and Teaching with an impact factor 1.68. The case study examines the theoretical underpinnings, process, and results of an online course for youth development professionals, and specifically describes a web-based instructional activity involving the use of social media. A qualitative case study methodology was utilized for the research. A qualitative case study allows for exploration of a specific phenomenon using a variety of data sources, including both qualitative and quantitative data. A case study methodology is completely explorative. which has no hypotheses and with a major limitation for generalizability. However, the benefit of qualitative inquiry is that it allows for deeper understanding of a phenomenon, enabling the essence of the experience to be tested.
In the study, researchers tried to find out about the quality of the social media assignment for an online graduate course in youth development and its impact on the learners. First of all, a detailed description of the course is offered, followed by course evaluation analysis and lessons learned. Data were collected through interviews, a course reflection paper, and open-ended survey questions. The provided case study showcased a social media project that facilitated student connectedness and enabled students studying youth development professionalism to increase their content knowledge and social media skills. Even though some students identified certain challenges related to technology and teamwork, the overall result was positive.
The benefits of case study is that it allows the authors to identify unique result which can help in the development and refinement of future social media projects. Theory-building researchers typically combine multiple data collection methods. While interviews, observations, and archival sources are particularly common.
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ReplyDeleteHi! Thanks for your interesting summary!
ReplyDeleteTo elaborate on whether the study is qualitative or quantitative, as I understand it the study is mainly qualitative as you mention the interviews, the observations etc. But it also had a quantitative aspect as they also analyzed how much the participants saved during the car free year. One of the benefits of a case study is that you can use a quantitative or a qualitative method, in this case they used both methods to cover the aspects of the research that people would wonder about, in a good way. As the question if there is money saved in the period the car isn’t used, is logic to answer in this study.
You have risen quite an interesting question about the "case study qualitative research". From the previous literature I have learnt that case study is just one of the kinds of the quantitative methods, while later we started to talk about it as the independent research method. Probably, your definition better satisfies both concepts.
ReplyDeleteRegarding the paper about the car-free life, I would say it's the interdisciplinary research as the researchers tried to put on "different hats", trying themselves in different disciplines.
Hi and thank you your reflection! I think you have highlighted most of the main points from the topic.
ReplyDeleteI also wanted to share (as already commented above) that the case study can be a mixture of both quantitative and qualitative research methods - a combination of the closed-ended and the open-eneded data (as it is within the example we were introduced to during the lecture). A quantitative one is also used when looking for the right participants to join the study.
This mixture gives the potential for strengthening the rigor and enriching the analysis of the finings.