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"Webshop"
06/04/2002 Entry
Today I gave a talk at the NSF-U.Maryland Webshop (reporting live). It's a great program. Now I'm off to New York. More on this later.
Replies: 2 Comments have been posted, click here to see them and add your own
Hi Eszter,
Your presentation was great, the audience was very strong, they criticized nearly all of your statments. Despite this I think their comments were helpful, and Ben had rigth that he stated you are a pioneer in this field. So, go further.
My comments: this methodology - I mean interviews and experiments are rather belongs to psychology and social psychology, did you think that you should somehow filter the respondents behavior - I mean that they are not at home, but in an artificial environment?
Maybe that could be better if you don't sit next to them, but you use a cover-story to dissolve their fears. And then let them solve the searching problems "alone" (while you can make video records - of course with their permission) and at the end ask them about their searching decisions.
Of course before it you must think the ethical side of this covering.
Hope we meet:
Robert
Posted by Robert Pinter @ 06/04/2002 04:36 PM CST
Hi Robert, thanks for your note and your thoughts on my project.
You're right, it was a very active audience at Webshop, it was interesting to hear all the comments. (Someone said to me recently that before you start your own dissertation, you criticize every minute detail in other people's projects. Then you start your own project and realize that compromises have to be made.)
Regarding the location of the study, I recognize that this is not people's usual environments. I considered the option of studying people in their homes or their work places, but given the technique I use for recording, it would have been very difficult.
By coming to the research center, every participant is in the same environment for the study and I think that helps in being able to compare their online actions.
Having conducted over 75 of these study sessions, I can tell you with quite a bit of confidence that my respondents do not exhibit any "fears" as you call it. Before sitting down at the computer, I administer a 20-25 minute questionnaire orally sitting with them. This interaction helps in developing a rapport between the respondent and the researcher. Respondents do not seem stressed or concerned. Moreover, the observation session starts off with tasks that are very casual and fairly general.
I do not videotape the people themselves, I don't know if this was perhaps unclear from my talk. I have a program that creates an audio-visual screen capture of what is on the screen. I think videotaping them would make them feel uncomfortable and would counter them acting naturally. Having the researcher right next to the respondent also helps with the atmosphere. It is an informal interaction. Participants often joke with the researcher and vice versa. This would not be possible if the researcher was not in the room. Moreover, if the respondent was left alone, in my opinion, s/he would feel quite self-conscious being in isolation. Finally, it is an essential part of this project to have ongoing interaction between the researcher and the respondent given that the researcher poses questions about the respondent's actions immediately after task completion. This would be much more difficult to do afterwards. (It would also make the whole session more artificial.)
Thanks for your input. I hope the above answers some of your questions.
Posted by eszter @ 06/08/2002 10:17 PM CST
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