The
article of my choice
I have chose to take a closer look at the article
"Attributions After a Group Failure: Do They Matter? Effects of
Attributions
on Group Communication and Performance" (http://crx.sagepub.com/content/39/4/499.full.pdf+html) published
in January 2011, in the communication research journal.
Key points: The article is about what attributes that
is connected to a group that would or has gone through one or many of failures.
After, the research looks at conditions that make the group prone to change
behavior and procedures within the group after the failure. They found student
that got credit for the participation in the project. They divided the students in to different groups, in the first meeting they
give them very negative feedback that is all made up, just to see how the
behavior within the group changes. The different attributes affecting the group
is divided in to internal and external attributes, where internal is the
individuals motivation, mood, etc. and the external is attributes such as time
pressure, task difficulty etc. The internal attributes are afterward divided in
to two types, the self-connected attribute for the individual in the group or
internal within the group as a unit. After the groups first assignment and the
negative feedback each group member had to evaluate their own participation,
the other group members participation and the outcome of the first assignment.
When time came for the second assignment the researchers could see how the
negative feedback had affected the group and what they, within the group saw as
the problems causing the negative feedback they got after the first assignment.
1. Which qualitative method or methods
are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these
methods?
The qualitative method used in the paper
is a field study of 174 people divided in to 58 groups. The groups had to work
together through a message chat and the whole process with communication logs
was saved and analyzed.
2. What did you learn about
qualitative methods from reading the paper?
I
learned that qualitative methods doesn’t necessarily have to be interviews. In
this case, the researchers are invisible for the groups and they don’t know
that their work together is being analyzed except for the end result of their
work. The researchers are, without interviewing the participants able to
collect trustworthy and complex data that they wouldn’t have been able to do
through a survey or interviews.
3. Which are the main methodological
problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods
have been improved?
The main methodological problem I found
in the article is that the participants are all students at a higher level, all
of the familiar to the process of working in group with others. Therefore it is
questionable if the study is applicable in general when it is uncertain that
other groups of people in the society would react the same way when doing group
assignments as the students did.
I
have chosen the article “Attributions
for Inconsistencies Between Online and Offline Self-Presentations” (http://crx.sagepub.com/content/38/6/805.full.pdf+html) I
realized when reading the "Process of Building Theory from Case
Study Research" that the first article I chose was in fact a case study.
In my second choice of article the researchers has chosen a case study with 92
undergraduate students and they were all required to have a Facebook account. They
had the participants find a general piece of information and an inconsistent
piece of information on three different facebook profiles, their own, a
friend’s and an acquaintance’s.
A
case study is research strategy that analyzes a
person, group or event. It investigates a phenomena within it real presence. It
is often used in new topic areas, where it is really useful in forming the base
of the researches understanding in the area.
Weaknesses
and Strengths of “Attributions
for Inconsistencies Between Online and Offline Self-Presentations”:
Strengths
The definition of the research question in the article
is good. The presentation of fact that it is based on is clear and concise. The
sampling is not random and the case was chosen wisely. Both comparisons with
conflicting and similar literature is made in the research which is a great strength.
Weaknesses
Regarding the data collecting process, it is only
viewed from one perspective without knowing or discussing if it is a bit
colored by the age of the participants, which are all undergrads. The research
has used quantitative research method result but they have not conducted them
by themselves.
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