Making Sense Out of Your Data: Using Qualitative Research to Enhance User

ExperienceJessie S. Barrot, PhD

Assistant Director for Research / Full ProfessorNational University, Philippines

Objectives

• To distinguish qualitative from quantitative research

• To identify the procedure for qualitative analysis

• To use qualitative research to enhance user experience (i.e., faculty researchers)

What is a Qualitative Research?

•type of scientific research that studies social and cultural phenomena (Myers, 1997)

•does not use control group or introduce treatment

•uses inductive reasoning from specific instances to general principles

•includes action research, case study, grounded theory, historical methods, and ethnography

•includes participant observation, in-depth interview, and focus groups

Advantages• provides information about the “human” side of an issue

• provides complex textual descriptions

• effective in identifying intangible factors, such as social norms and gender roles

• supplements quantitative data

Disadvantages of Qualitative Research

•highly subjective resulting in difficulty in establishing reliability

•prone to researcher induced bias

•scope is generally limited; lacks generalizability; limited applicability

•requires intensive transcription and coding

•time consuming

Qualitative vs Quantitative Research

Qualitative QuantitativeSeeks to explore phenomena Seeks to confirm hypothesisUses semi-structured methods Uses highly structured methodsDescribes variation Quantifies variationOpen-ended Close-endedTextual NumericalEthnographic, naturalistic, grounded, subjective

Experimental, statistical

Usually uses small sample Usually uses large samples

How can we use qualitative research to enhance user experience?

Who can be our target users?

As librarians, you can initiate…

•Create a national database of dissertation and thesis per discipline

•Initiate studies on unpublished dissertations and theses per discipline

•Initiate studies on papers published by Filipino researchers

First few steps…

•Create a database of all published articles and unpublished dissertation/theses by Filipino researchers according to field.

•Create research groups that zero in on one a specific field.

•Make research plan.

How to do the qualitative analysis

• Read the abstract of each paper and identify its theme (specific subfield).

• Identify the focus, research type, and methodology used in each of the study.

• Cluster the themes into a sub-category (field).

• Synthesize all research that belong to one sub-field and describe the landscape of the field.

• Identify the research gaps.

• Cluster the sub-categories into main categories (major fields).

THANK YOU!!!Email Address:

jessiebarrot@yahoo.com

• https://web.csulb.edu/~msaintg/ppa696/696quali.htm

• http://www.ccs.neu.edu/course/is4800sp12/resources/qualmethods.pdf

• http://www.okstate.edu/ag/agedcm4h/academic/aged5980a/5980/newpage21.htm

• http://www.xavier.edu/library/students/documents/qualitative_quantitative.pdf

• http://www.und.edu/instruct/wstevens/PROPOSALCLASS/Huntpaper.htm

• http://www.cwu.edu/~jefferis/PEHL557/pehl557_qualit.html