Both seminar groups unfortunately got cancelled this week. Since we would have mainly talked about different Quantitive methods and, from what I understood in the lecture, used them in examples, this would have been the main part on how to reflect on the first of the two questions. However, due to the cancellation of the Seminar my view on the paper and quantitive methods remains mainly intact: The benefit of quantitive methods being the ability to put the answers into numbers that then are easier to analyze and visualize and that a qualitative input could have provided further information on the usage of Facebook. And lastly, the sample group used in the paper remains questionable as it only accounts for university students that tend to be in one age group and have similar social views and habits. The only addition I have to this is, that it is not entirely clear, wether Ellison et. al. did test their quantitive questionnaire prior to gathering their final set of data.
In connection to Bergström and colleagues paper I have come to understand, that the stereotypical use of the casual dressed dark skinned character versus the formal dressed white skinned character was highly intentional as they wanted to prove that there can be a behavioral change when experiencing an illusions of ownership during Virtual Reality usage. Therefore the bigger the stereotype is, the higher the chance of proving a change in behavior was likely. Thus my critique of interpretation was inept as further research in that way would not change the proof of concept.
We discussed in class if further research in regards to my suggestion would be of interest and it was concluded that it was not as it would not lead to new knowledge. The journal where the original paper was submitted would not publish it and publishing it on another journal with a lower impact factor would understandably not be of interest to any researcher.
However, I still have to object to this to some extend: while I understand, that further research will not change the existing proof of concept, research in why this phenomena is possible and how it is triggered could be of interest to some research areas or for example game developers to improve the VR experience and the storytelling. That being said, further research does not have to be done by the same researcher. Only that after a proof of existence it might be of interest to understand why this phenomena exists, not only that it exists.
I agree with you that it would be interesting somehow to replicate the research. Maybe especially in this example a further step would not be replication of the exact same experiment with other avatars, but apply the concept to another context. So for example different musical instruments could be used and the stereotypically appropriate avatar. I think the research helped the basic understanding of what is possible with VR and the influences on the behaviors of people in there. Now this knowledge has to be used and applied, and further investigated.
ReplyDeleteI got a similar understanding. It would be interesting to replicate this research. And I would very much like to see the result of such research. Especially if there would be different test groups with different social and cultural background. The comparison of the cultural prejudices would be interesting to see.
ReplyDeleteYou write that university students tend to be in one age group and have similar social views and habits. I don’t agree that students have similar social views and habits, but I agree that it is problematic since the result can not be applied to the population as a whole.
ReplyDeleteWe have similar views on the Bergström et. al article and that it would be of great interest to see what the outcome would be if e.g. the dark skinned character would have worn formal clothing instead (decreasing the cultural prejudice). I also think it would be viable to have participants with a wider diversity range (i.e. not only Caucasian). Illias answer was though-provoking as I have not previously previously thought about the researcher’s reputation being that important before.
Thanks for your reflections and first post of theme 4. In your first post for theme 4, you wrote is not clear how they guarantee the randomness of the sample group. It would be interesting to know how they have defined work method and their sample method criteria. Maybe the sample (even if just students) was sufficient to represent the population depending on the research goal. Maybe for the aim of the study the sample size was of bigger importance because it has a direct influence on the significance. What I mean, for this aim the size might be more important but of course the sample also have to be representative for the population. However you don’t mention the population, just that the sample is not representative but if the population are university student the sample would be representative.
ReplyDeleteHello, nice reflecting! At the first post for this theme you found the problematics in the paper and criticized the sample group as they were exclusively students. Yes, I agree, the choice of an sample group is significant regarding the results and the ability to generalize the results. You continue with the same theme here in your second post, and draw a connection to stereotyping that seemed to be the basis for the IVR drumming study. For me that felt like an accurate point and as the discussion above shows, it would be benefitting to replicate the study with a differently dressed avatars.
ReplyDeleteThank you for your thoughts!! :)