HELPING PEOPLE'S

Janet Salmons is a network member and a contributing expert to the online team.  There are nearly as many kinds of research approaches as there are questions to study. While it is the task of the researcher to match approach to question, it is clear that some researchers simply prefer one approach over another, and select types of questions that permit them to carry out the inquiry in the preferred way. I admit it, I am guilty. While I see the value in all sorts of studies, I would not be content to crunch Big Data, even if it meant I could generate impressive maps and diagrams. I want to learn about their experiences first hand. I want to know why. Why did you make that choice and not another, why was it important to you, why do you plan to do things differently in the future? I cannot ask an extant mountain of Big Data to tell me more. Online interviews allow researchers to pose questions in a variety of ways with participants anywhere, at any time. In synchronous interviews we ...

After the success of our webinar on qualitative methods ( http://nsmnss.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/update-from-our-webinar.html ) we’ll be hosting a webinar on quantitative research and new social media on Monday the 8th of April. The webinar will follow the format of the previous webinar, a panel if researchers will outline three key issues for quantitative research and then open the discussion up to the floor. In advance of the webinar we’d like to invite network members to let us know if there are any burning issues that they would like to see addressed during the webinar. We’d also like to invite network members who’d like to present case studies or sessions during the webinar to get in touch with us. If there any particular issues you’d like to see us address, either leave us a comment below, tweet us or email jerome.finnegan@natcen.ac.uk . If you’re searching for inspiration, why not take a look at some of the videos from our quant knowledge exchange seminar http://nsmnss.blogspot.co...