Primary Research Methods & Data Collection

Primary Research Methods

Ethics
When using human participants you need to be approved by a tutor in advance. Any research using vulnerable people (children or people with certain disabilities) must be approved by the ethics sub-committee. Research involving human participants must be anonymous and you must obtain informed consent in advance.

Empiricism vs Rationalism
There are two main approaches to knowledge

Empiricism: something is only true if it is experiences using senses- what you do though primary research
Start with questions that have not already been answered (preferably)
These questions will contain the clues to the potential methods by which you will find the answers
ie: they are about people's feeling, opinions, activities, circumstances, relationships etc


Rationalism: truth can be grasped intellectually using logic and reason- what you do through discussion, arguing...

Qualitative/ quantitive data
Empirical research is all about data collection and analysis... however, 'data' can take different forms
Quantitive data is organised in numerical form
Qualitative data is found in language- written or oral

Data Collection:

Focus Groups: group gathered deliberately selected people who participate in a planned discussion                              about a particular topic.

Survey- Interviews: Structured/ semi- structured/ unstructured
           - Questionnaires: should be multiple choice, easy to complete, easy to read and understand                     without leading questions

Ethnography: (study of people and cultures) Participant observation- spend time establishing                                   yourself as part of that group, unlikley to have time for this
                       / direct observation- situated outside the group, just there to observe (much more                               appropriate for this essay considering time limits)

Content analysis: Extracting quantitive data from qualitative sources- Measures the frequency of pre-                              specified items within a particular context

Creative Explorations (Gauntlett, 2007): Using creative techniques as a means of gathering                                                                                    subjective data: Lego building, collage, film making etc...

Cross referencing: You may have basic personal information (e.g gender) that you can cross                                               reference with other trends (i.e 30% of men prefer black)

Statistically significant: How do you decide if a result is significant? This needs to be asked early on                                         in the process and should have some logical or rational justification.

Qualitative
Coding: making sense of numerous qualitative responses from the same questions won't happen                        without some coding. Coding means organising your data into common themes/ concepts.

Deductive analysis: (top down)- using a general rule of theory to find specific data in support of the                                     rule.
Inductive analysis: (down up) Using the data and your analysis to establish new generalisations                                          about the subject.


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My Data Collection

I want to use data gathered through playing and observing video games, namely violent ones such as Modern Warfare which will be easily accessible as my housemates play this often and I've seen and heard the aggressive threats made to them by other users worldwide, wether it be through an IM or vocally through a headset. I will carry out sound recordings during gameplay as well as interview frequent players and gage what if any effect it has on them.

I may also create a surveymonkey survey in order to gather a wider audience with different demographics such as age and sex as having used the headpiece before the men who were playing the game told me alot more people will turn their microphones on as a result of hearing a female voice. It was interesting to initially be warned of a division of the sexes and felt like it was more of a novelty for women to be playing these games, but I was still called a "dumb bitch" within 5 minutes into talking to people online. I therefore want to gather information from a range of diversities and gage if there is more or less impact on certain people, there may be sexist, racist and homophonic comments more or less than I think, at present I'm unaware of this specific sector (gaming) but want to explore this avenue as part of 'screen based applications' as I feel it's relevant as '69% of all heads of household play computer and video games'.