Theme 3 - Reflection

After this weeks seminar the concept of theory become more comprehensible. I think the theme was very interesting and rewarding, because of how a word so “obvious” can be so confusing. During the seminar we discuss the term in different angles. First of all the theory can be seen from different perspectives regarding the topic and the type of analysis that it raises. A collection of hypotheses built together a theory that can be tested in the way of a purpose. We also discussed the differences between an assertion and a hypothesis. The assertion can be true or false, while the hypothesis has to be tested. Prediction can also be true or false depending of whom it affects or who will be tested, in time and space. For instance, the definition of Social Media, which category does it belongs to? It’s different know compare for 10 years ago. Doubts about what actually belongs to what, social media or mass media?

At the seminar we also discuss two types of theory, normative theories and descriptive theories. Normative theories are rules which are implicitly or unwritten. For instance, you don’t pass the road when the red man lightning or in Sweden you don’t go inside with you shoes on. While Descriptive theories are more how we describe things, “The humans are deadly” or “Is it okay to eat animals” etc. I have never looked at the word theory as like this before. It was pretty interesting to get an overview of what it can be categorized as.
 

I think the taxonomies of theory types were bit tricky to categorize my paper as, we discussed this at the seminar and it was be different depending on how you look at them in relation to the paper. But still, I want to hold on to my decision and use the prediction, grounded by the hypotheses that been tested and the limitation of the generality and reliability of the result regarding the few participators.

The study in my paper was based on two theories, multiple recourse theory and threaded cognition. These theories shaped five hypotheses and they tested them in different ways. The number of participators was 84, they should look at a news piece on 14 min and answer on different question, and at the same time Google the answers. Before the seminar I criticized the small amount of participators, but now I will see the result as good, just because the qualitative result they got out of it. In this kind of research its good to investigate the qualitative of each participators to collect the most important aspects.

Theme 4 – Quantitative Research

This week I read the text Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work? The study investigated how people use social media in purpose of the work and how social media use yields both hedonic and utilitarian value.

The investigation was grounded by a quantitative research in form of a big questioner in the insurance industry, with 1799 participants. The questioner was distributed in three different ways: they visited the workplace of the participants, it was sending by email containing an on-line version and lastly in relation to two large conferences over the country involving the insurance companies. The participants were composed almost equally, 52% men and 48% women. The advantage of this method is the amount of data you get out of it, the result represent a major part of the people. The limitation of a quantitative research is that you lose peoples own aspects and thoughts about the specific topic. Sometimes, there is good to get peoples expressions to get another view of the result. Another limitation is the respondent’s dishonest responds; they just to move on to the next question just to finish the questioner. You have to expect some of the respondents don’t choose the right answers, just because of their unsure answers.

Some of the things that I learn from the paper were as I wrote right above, and that it requires a lot of time to collect a big collection of data, to analyse it and to get a significant result of it with minimized error data. I found that this study with only workers from the insurance industry didn’t represent all social workers. They could improve the study by collect data from different companies in different industries, to gain a reliability and better result.

To use a qualitative method requires a lot of time to remind the respondents to filling out questioners or other kind of data collections. To give them the opportunity to participate in a lottery or give them some rewards, will increase the participation and hopefully a more reliability result. If you have multiple choice questions with even numbers of respondents, the unsure responders will chooses somewhere in the middle. To improve that, it can be better to have a “middle” choice.

The qualitative method will gain more specific results as the responder’s own thoughts and expressions. But it takes a lot of time to do the tasks like focus groups and interviews, it requires a lot of time to collect the data and transcribe the materials. And lastly analyse the result and make a good discussion and conclusion out of it.

Theme 2 - Reflection

During this week and the theme critical media studies I had some concepts that I didn’t understood: dialectical, substructure and superstructure. But after the class on Tuesday, they become more clear and acceptable, but still I have more to learn.

Some of the most interesting concepts the lecture was about were the nominalism, which means that the name if a thing has nothing in common with the objects existence. Is has now become more clear and I understand the words significance. But still I think it’s a useless word in the way of describing something, if it’s just a “name” why can’t it at the same time be the description and connection to the thing. Why do they analyse it as just a name? I understand the word, but not the meaning and the purpose of it.

I expected more in-depth description of what substructure and superstructures are, and how these connect the theory of enlightenment to the today’s societies structures. I would like to clarify these concepts more to put them in a reliability example, and through that understand them in a general perspective.

Theme 3 - Research and theory

Computers in Human Behaviour (2,273)

The journal addresses the use of computers in a form of a psychological perspective and how it impacts the use for every individual, group and the whole society. How it effects the human development, learning, cognition, personality and social interactions. It gives an analysis of the human behaviour in relation to usage of computers.

“TV no longer commands our full attention”: Effects of second-screen viewing and task relevance on cognitive load and learning from news.

The article is about the increasing usage of second-screen viewing wile watching television, it contributes to decreased attention and the television has become the most common device that is used in multitasking environment. The investigation of these phenomena analyses how people watching television and dedicate their attention during this time at the mobile device. The method is based on staging the everyday situation while looking to news and at the same time use a computer to answers questions. After finishing the task, they’ll answers some short questioners that handle the news on the television. This analyse weather the people had attention on the screen or at the television during the task. The groups attending to this investigation was analysed by their age, gender, education, cognition, Internet self-efficacy etc. Discussions will show that their hypotheses met their expectations, the second-screen viewing leads to a lower factual recall and comprehension of news than non-multitasking.

Before the study, they come up with some hypotheses’ that contributed to a stricter work to help achieve the goals. But it can also manipulate the results at the end, if they know what they will come up with. It was easy to follow and understand what was the aim of the study. I also wonder weather the collected data meet the credibility and reliability? The number of participants (85) was enough I think, but the target group was only students. I think the participants have to be from different group in the society, to meet the results to represent the general population.

It was also hard to find the conclusion, they didn’t explain how the second-screen viewing affecting the learning from news. They just analyse the results based on the hypotheses’ and for each part.

1. Briefly explain to a first year university student what theory is, and what theory is not.

First of all, the term Theory is very diffused and hard to explain even for my self, even though I have been in contact with it for several of times before. Its easier to explain that its not and give examples of it. Theory is a collection of results and conclusions that researches have come up with from different kind of investigations and it can be categorized in different areas (analysing, explaining, predicting, explaining &predicting and design & action). According to Gregor (2006) it can be hypothesis that has been confirmed, statements of principles or something known that has to be observed. Simplistic, it’s something that you would like to explain or investigate whether it meets some expectations, for that you’ll have to analyse and made studies on that particular question. To answer on the question, you’ll need to collect data, and remember data aren’t theory even though the references you use. It’s important to separate the theory from the collecting of info and data to analyse and make theories of.

2. Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

In the article of second-screen viewing they use quantitative data where they have a group of people watching news at the same time as using a computer, to answers some questions about the daily news. Before the investigation, they came up with some hypotheses’ that they would analyse and see if they were true. To prove and look at these things, they used several steps to collect data and get feedback of the hypotheses’. They have questioners that analysis how much the participants remember from the task. I would like to categorise this type of theorise as a prediction, because of the tests of something reachable and very natural.

3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

The limits of the investigation its the design of the tasks it may not meet the expectations of the real world. The participants know the tasks and it may contribute to wrong data, the theme of the task differs from the real worlds experience of second-screen viewing. Most people’s second-screen viewing are in their home, sitting by the television and check social media, news that are interesting them and not a boring task to solve. That will modify the attention from the participants and the investigation may not contribute to a credibility result.

The study gives a quantitative result, that gain knowledge about the students it self.