Theme 6 (pre)

THEME 6 (pre)

1. Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
2. What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?
3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?

The article that I’ve chosen is “Perceived connections between information and communication technology use and mental symptoms among young adults - a qualitative study”. As the title reveals the article is about how ICT use can affect young adults in terms of mental symptoms, such as: depression, sleep disorder, stress etc.

The qualitative method was based on a previous quantitative study (which wasn’t included in this article). They got their responders from the quantitative study (a questionnaire regarding the same topic), where they had reported high ICT exposure prior to reporting mental symptoms. 44 individuals were contacted to participate in this study but some couldn’t attend, therefore 32 young adult participated (20-28 years).

The qualitative study included individual semi-structured interviews. They were asked open-ended question about possible connections between stress, depression and sleep disturbance and ICT (focus on phone and computer) use. An example of a question could like this: “Do you think there is a connection between the use of computers and stress? If so, how? Have you experienced that yourself? What about people in general?”. Parallel to the interviews a physician psychiatric assessments of the participants. The interviews were then sorted into different topics and thematic domains. These thematic domains were then studied regarding their relations between each other, finally a model were created that illustrates the connection between mental symptoms and ICT use.

It’s hard to find benefits and limitations with this kind of method since it’s a quite regular and straightforward method: gather participants that fits the subject, perform semi structured interviews, analyse the result and create a model/conclusion. The benefits of this method is the same as  for qualitative methods itself, which is that it gives a in-depth view over the subject. And the limitation can be that, since it’s a small group of people, it gives a reuslt that can’t be seen as representative for the whole target group.   

I didn’t learn that much reading this article regarding qualitative methods. But I think it’s interesting that they use both the semi structured interviews combined with a analys from a physician, as if they wouldn’t beleive in what kind of mental symptom the responders are experiencing.

I think the example question they presented in the text (the one above) is biased. They are in a way proposing, in the question, that there is a connection between mental symptoms and ICT use, which perhaps makes the responders answer in a positive way for the sake of the study. The author also wrote that he thought that the responders didn’t answer all question by experience but for the common thought of the subject. And since the question was kind of biased, the common thought of the subject might appear in a way that perhaps isn’t completely true.  

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study examines a event, organisation, behaviour, individual etc. It examines and explains the specific phenomena and gives examples and data from that phenomena that makes it easier to understand and analyze it. In the end it will give more understanding of the chosen phenomena, which can be appropriate for research areas that haven’t been explored yet..

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

The paper that I’ve chosen is “The effect of Piracy upon the music industry: a case study of Bootlegging” published in the journal “Media, culture and society”. The article discuss, as the title reveals, the impact that the bootlegging has on the music industry, with a main focus on the economic part. The author (Lee Marshall) first presents the object of the article and then try to define bootlegging and how that is separated from other kinds of piracy in the music industry. Then he discuss the positive and negative aspects of bootlegging on the music industry, with the help of citations from interviews that the author conducted with various bootleggers and numerous examples.

The biggest weakness of the paper is that he (the author) can’t come up with a real conclusion. He states in the end: “The overall effects of bootlegging are impossible to ascertain with accuracy…”  and continues saying that it both has positive aspects and disadvantageous upon the music industry. I don’t find it as a good case study since he can’t really answer the research question. That might be because he doesn’t have that much data or “evidence”. He just explains example how an artist might have been affected by the bootlegging community. I can’t see that he tries to analyze the examples all together and try to “wrap it up” in a way. Therefore, when looking at Table 1 in “Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research” I find that the author clearly fail to do the step called “Analyzing Data”