The Invisible Web Weblog

Recently I have been involved in a case study on research methods of children literature. On the other hand, I am adviser of a doctoral thesis on the concept of elderly in the Persian literature. My role in these studies is advising the researchers about the qualitative content analysis. So, though my knowledge about these areas is limited, I can contribute to these studies in terms of the methodological aspects. This is a wonderful paradoxical situation for me and I enjoy learning from people in such a different areas. Thanks to the qualitative research that provides me with such amazing opportunities for learning and getting involved in various interdisciplinary projects.

The international conference on Qualitative Research in Web 2.0 will be held on the 22 & 23 February 2011 in Macau, China. The conference will explore critical issues and opportunities of implementing online qualitative research. The themes are: What are the advantages and disadvantages of conducting qualitative research online? Integrating Web 2.0 into traditional qualitative research Understanding when to use online methods over traditional methods How to design, execute and report online qualitative research studies? Developing participant recruitment strategies Keeping stakeholders engaged: how to keep clients involved in your online research Discussing challenges while carrying out qualitative analyses in social media Developing engaging market research online communities for qualitative research Exploring the use online research community for understanding cultural assumptions Evaluating different types of approaches with the online research community Discussing the use of mu...

This Tuesday (26 October) I was an external examiner for an MSc dissertation at the University of Isfahan. The title of this dissertation was “Designing a Model for Context-Aware Recommender Systems in Digital Libraries”. The researcher used Grounded Theory to investigate contextual factors influential in the process of the selection and decision making in recommender systems in digital libraries. The central concept developed in this research named Scientific Research Ground (SRG). SRG has contexts which situate individuals in a range of conditions when interacting with computerized systems. Users’ attributes such as purposes, activities, information literacy and skills, mental status, supposition, assumption, occupational condition, social status are some of such contexts. In general, it was a profound study with a good contribution to the area.

Today afternoon I delivered a presentation in the Department of Information Studies and Interactive Media (INFIM), at the University of Tampere. The title of this presentation is “LIS Students’ Assessments of their own Writing Skills: A Qualitative Case Study”. If you are interested to have more details, please email me to have the slides.

Today, as part of my teaching in the "Research Methods" class, I was explaining the basics of open coding procedure in qualitative studies. Open coding, which is usually the first phase of data analysis in this approach, is a method to find concepts in the collected data. While this explanation, I noticed once again that "creativity" is an essential element for researchers in this stage. Otherwise, it becomes too difficult to get a good outcome in qualitative studies. Hopefully, in the future posts, I'll write some practical suggestions to enhance creativity in qualitative research.

The following paper was published recently: Mansourian, Y. (2010), Evolving perceptions of LIS students about their discipline: An action research with inquiry-based learning approach, Library Review , Vol. 59, No. 3, PP. 185 - 197.

I recently wrote a paper, “Researchers’ Hopes and Doubts to Qualitative Approach in their Research Process” which summarizes my opinion about the ups and downs that we usually face in a research journey . In this paper I explored the strengths and weaknesses of this approach in the early, middle and final stages of research projects. The bibliographic information of the paper is as follows: Mansourian, Y. (2010). Researchers’ Hopes and Doubts to Qualitative Approach in their Research Process, Kolliyat, No 147, PP. 60-66.

I am writing a brief viewpoint paper about the dynamism vs. stasis in research approach. In this paper I try to explain that almost all sorts of studies are, or at least should be, dynamic and flexible in terms of their direction and scope. By dynamism in research, I mean we are not able to prepare all steps and predict all aspects of a research project in advance. This is somehow inevitable in qualitative and exploratory studies, and the researcher has to follow the new directions which appear during the course of research. The emergent horizons in research provide us with great opportunities for more creativity and innovation. Of course, this change of direction doesn’t mean that we should easily forget the initial research aims and objectives. It only shows the fundamental flexibility in the nature of research. I’ll explain this issue in the future posts in more details.

Today morning I delivered a presentation at TMU for faculty members and students, entitled "The Quality of Qualitative Research: Authenticity of Research Process and Research Findings in Qualitative Approach". In this presentation I talked about how the evaluation criteria of research process, like validity and reliability in quantitative studies, have been replaced by new measures such as: trustworthiness, dependability, objectivity, confirmability, transferability, neutrality, interpretative and procedural rigour, and credibility.

Yesterday, I delivered a presentation at our university about the basics of data analysis and interpretation in qualitative research and how we can make sense of piles of notes and raw materials in our studies to present meaningful and comprehensible results. The presentation's title was "How to Make Sense of Qualitative Data in Qualitative Studies". If you like to see the PowePoint file please send me an email.

Recently I had another interview with IBNA on the issue of existing approaches in LIS research. In this interview, I mentioned that until now most of the LIS studies in the country have been adopting quantitative approaches and we need to do more research with qualitative methods to make a reasonable balance between these two paradigms. You can see the full transcription of the interview on IBNA website at here .