For example, in 2009 we started seeing articles describing how use of Facebook had “doubled over the past 60 days” or how in the past year Facebook as grown by 145% among users in the United States (from 20 million in 2007 to over 103 million in January of 2010). By July 2010 US users had exceeded 125 million, while newspapers reported that the total user base had exceeded 500 million users worldwide. Facebook, and SNS, growth exceed everyone’s expectations. The question remains, is this a viable area for recruiting participants for research?

I would side on the positive. My own experience with recruiting participants online has convinced me that for some types of research, recruiting online is hugely beneficial. I was looking for a global sample of individuals who had a particular type of life experience. I ran an add on Facebook, and within one month had over 2 million “impressions” go out to the public, with 1, 073 people clicking on my add, all for $211. Slightly over half of my participants lived in India, a population I could never have reached with so little funding (and a typical faculty researcher’s budget). Additional respondents hailed from Australia, Canada, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and the Ukraine, in addition to my US participants. Undoubtedly SNS allows for contact with a much broader group of individuals, and in my opinion this completely changes the game, as it were, for social scientists conducting research.

For more information on SNS and research based on networking sites, I encourage you to visit the bibliography at http://www.danah.org/researchBibs/sns.php. It seems to be updated regularly and offers a large variety of research chapters & articles.

Personally I (Ryan Rominger) have moved into a formal Core Executive Faculty within the Global Programs (distance learning program) at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Part of this move was to take on the role of Associate Dissertation Director and help reform our dissertation departments into one unified dissertation department serving the 3 Ph.D. programs at the school. We are currently serving 155 students and will likely be up to 175 by holiday break, and 190 by the end of the academic year. In addition to the organizational change, the Director and I were charged with re-creating the forms, policies, and procedures for the entire dissertation process. Whew!

Besides the teaching and Associate Dissertation Director role, I am acting as the faculty trainer for our new online learning management system - (Angel Learning). It is quite a nice system, similar to eCollege, but the transition from our (ITP’s) old system to this new system has required quite a bit of training on my part so that I could train the Faculty! It has been fun, of course, as it pertains to online education and technology.

Meanwhile, there have been conference presentations (in particular the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education held in Orlando, FL this past year) and papers (1. Diversity Bibliography and Resources published through Division 2 - Society for the Teaching of Psychology - of the American Psychological Association Div. Biblio 2. Exploring the Aftereffects of the Near-Death Experience: A Summative Report to be published by the Journal of Near-Death Studies Exploring Aftereffects). So, yea, busy. However, it has been a good busy and quite a bit of fun amid the chaos. I look forward to getting back into blogging on this site, so stay tuned.

Wikis are now being used in a large variety of ways, including as business web pages and as means for students and teachers to collaboratively create content for courses (be it to deliver course material or to post papers or even to create their own specialized topical wiki). Additionally, individuals are using wikis as a type of public mind-map, personal web page, or basic organizational space to help them keep projects in line.

To see examples of the use of wikis or to find out more…. please visit the following wiki page:

PBWiki: http://pbwiki.com/
This site has examples of Business and Class wikis and info on how wikis work.
Wikipedia (Wiki): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
This describes what a wiki is and the communities connected with various wikis.

And for a list of hosted wikis, try:
Wiki Farms: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms

And for those who want to host a wiki on their own server, you might like these sites:
Wikipedia (Wiki software): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Wiki Engines: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines
Top Ten Wiki Engines: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TopTenWikiEngines
Choosing a Wiki: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ChoosingaWiki

And this is just a start. Enter “wiki” into any viable search engine, and I’m sure you will receive even more information and web pages to visit. Even if you don’t use a wiki yourself, I believe it will be important for us all to know how wikis work. The reason I believe this has to do with the evolution of the internet: the internet is changing, becoming more dynamic and interactive. The wiki is one example of this, and if you understand the wiki system, then you can see the relational manner of information exchange within our public internet today. So, take a minute, take an hour, but take some time and learn a bit more about wikis. You might just be surprised and find you could host your own wiki about your particular specialty topic!!

This is a conference that is coming up specifically on the use of computer software during qualitative data analysis. You may wish to visit the website (http://caqdas.soc.surrey.ac.uk/conference/conference07.htm) for details. According to the website, the conference “brings together methodologists, users, developers and trainers of software designed to facilitate qualitative research, to discuss and share methods, applications and experiences.”

Found another link to online articles focused on assessing various qualitative data analysis programs (QDAPs). This website has recent online articles that compare programs such as Atlas.ti, NVivo, Ethnograph, MAZqda2, HyperRESEARCH, and others. If you are interested in finding out about other’s comparisons, this is another valuable resource.

I would like to point out the first article (as of this post) by Lewins & Silver. It is a working paper comparing all of the above named programs and a couple others. I found this article well laid out with much helpful information. NOTE: Any article you read that is an analysis of a given program is limited to the version(s) that is current at the time. I personally just finished an in-depth review, including downloading a number of demos to try out the programs, and noted many updates since the last analysis I had read. I highly encourage researchers to read the articles they find, but to also look at the most recent version of the programs. I believe that many of the program developers probably look at these articles and use them to improve their own products. Thus, during my recent (last week) analysis I found that many programs were quite similar. So, go to the developer websites and find out for yourself - compare the new version pros and cons to the article pros and cons. This will help you in your search for the right program for your current study. [And on that note - each program will have its advantages for different studies....]

I was pointed to this resource by a colleague, Robert Walker, who is using Journler to track his research project. After downloading it and making several entries, I believe that Journler could be a valuable research tool and, thus, wanted to share it with all of you.

Journler is a software program for Mac OS 10.4 (and older version exists for 10.3.9) that allows one to keep a journal on your computer. Journler integrates with your other applications like iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, etc. and you can also record strait into the program, keeping digital notes for yourself on a given project. I personally will be using it to track my musings on different projects, especially on qualitative research projects. Two additional perks: it is searchable, andÃ?  you can create “smart folders” that allow folders to add entries based on a set of given criteria. One example is my dream journal - it adds any entries with the category of “Dreams.”

The possibilities are many. Check it out and see if it could be right for you.

I would love to hear your feedback as well regarding iListen. If you have used it, did you like it? How well did it work for your needs, and would you also recommend it for speech recognition, command recognition, and transcription? You comments will help others when they are attempting to parcel out the pros and cons of various programs. Thanks, and Cheers.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Prractical Technology in Researech.pdf

Here is a bibliography on Computer Assisted Qualitative Data Analysis Software (CAQDAS). I find large bibliographies like this useful when doing my own background research on a topic, including comparing different QDA Programs for various types of qualitative analysis.

You may additionally find this bibliography helpful if you are a conducting research and need to expand your literature review of QDAS prior to going into ethical review of your own study. Having a grounding in how a computer program helps with qualitative analysis (and what the limitations of computer analysis might be), and what various programs do with your data from a security perspective (is the data and analysis local or on a server someplace else?) is important.

So, have a look. I plan on reviewing some of these over time and posting comments on particularly helpful articles.