A Guide to Conducting Online Research is designed to support students, academics and research practitioners in using technology to conduct their research. The book begins by looking at what questions to ask and how to prepare to conduct online research, then concentrates on particular technologies and how to employ them effectively, before concluding with a discussion of the peculiarities of conducting research in the online environment. Practical advice is offered on common issues and problems, such as: - How to decide which application is best for your research purposes? - What can be done to guarantee the anonymity of research participants? - What kinds of challenges do firewalls present and how can they be mitigated? A Guide to Conducting Online Research provides a wealth of advice, explanation, instruction, self-help tips and examples, making this a helpful resource for anyone using technology in conducting their research.

This book addresses the needs of researchers who want to conduct surveys online. Issues discussed include sampling from online populations, developing online and mobile questionnaires, and administering electronic surveys, are unique to digital surveys. Others, like creating reliable and valid survey questions, data analysis strategies, and writing the survey report, are common to all survey environments. This single resource captures the particulars of conducting digital surveys from start to finish

Online research methods are popular, dynamic and fast-changing. Following on from the great success of the first edition, published in 2008, The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods, Second Edition offers both updates of existing subject areas and new chapters covering more recent developments, such as social media, big data, data visualization and CAQDAS. Bringing together the leading names in both qualitative and quantitative online research, this new edition is organised into nine sections: 1. Online Research Methods 2. Designing Online Research 3. Online Data Capture and Data Collection 4. The Online Survey 5. Digital Quantitative Analysis 6. Digital Text Analysis 7. Virtual Ethnography 8. Online Secondary Analysis: Resources and Methods 9. The Future of Online Social Research The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods, Second Edition is an essential resource for anyone interested in the contemporary practice of computer-mediated research and scholarship.

A Guide to Conducting Online Research is designed to support students, academics and research practitioners in using technology to conduct their research. The book begins by looking at what questions to ask and how to prepare to conduct online research, then concentrates on particular technologies and how to employ them effectively, before concluding with a discussion of the peculiarities of conducting research in the online environment. Practical advice is offered on common issues and problems, such as: - How to decide which application is best for your research purposes? - What can be done to guarantee the anonymity of research participants? - What kinds of challenges do firewalls present and how can they be mitigated? A Guide to Conducting Online Research provides a wealth of advice, explanation, instruction, self-help tips and examples, making this a helpful resource for anyone using technology in conducting their research.

The internet is a compelling tool for research, enabling efficient, cost-effective data collection and facilitating access to large samples and new populations. This book presents a state-of-the-art guide to the internet as a tool for conducting research in the social and behavioural sciences using qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches. New to this edition: Fully re-written to reflect the emergence of Web 2.0 technologies Expanded coverage of web surveys for data collection Unobtrusive methods to harvest data from online archives and documents New practical tools and resources, where to find them, and how to keep up-to-date with new developments as they emerge New chapter on research ethics and discussion of ethical practicalities throughout Guiding the reader through the theoretical, ethical and practical issues of using the internet in research, this is an essential resource for researchers wishing to assess how the latest techniques, tools and methods in internet-mediated research may support and expand research in their own field.

Conducting Online Research on Amazon Mechanical Turk® and Beyond, written by Leib Litman and Jonathan Robinson, provides both students and experienced researchers with essential information about the online platforms most often used for social science research. This insightful and accessible text answers common questions like, "How do I maintain data quality in online studies?," "What is the best way to recruit hard-to-reach samples?" and "How can researchers navigate the ethical issues that are unique to online research?" Drawing on their experiences as the founders of CloudResearch (formerly TurkPrime), the authors provide information that guides new users planning their first online studies and engages even the most experienced researchers with detailed discussions about the challenges of online research. The book begins with an overview of Amazon’s Mechanical Turk and its rapid rise within academic research. Then, the authors describe how to set up an MTurk study with screenshots that walk readers through the steps of creating an account, designing a study, collecting data, and using third-party applications to enhance MTurk’s functionality. Later chapters provide readers with a detailed understanding of the MTurk environment and use data from hundreds of thousands of participants and tens of millions of completed tasks to dive into issues like participant demographics, sources of sampling bias, and the generalizability of findings from MTurk. Finally, the book explores the benefits of using other online platforms as a complement to MTurk and the ethical issues that are unique to conducting research with online participant platforms. Throughout the book, the authors share hands-on advice and best practices, such as those for conducting longitudinal studies or carrying out complex studies. Altogether the mix of data, insight, and advice make this book an essential resource for researchers who want to understand the online environment and the most effective ways to conduct research online.

Qualitative researchers can now connect with participants online to collect deep, rich data and generate new understandings of contemporary research phenomena. Doing Qualitative Research Online gives students and researchers the practical and scholarly foundations needed to gain digital research literacies essential for designing and conducting studies based on qualitative data collected online. The book will take a broad view of methodologies, methods and ethics, covering: Ethical issues in research design and ethical relationships with participants Designing online qualitative studies Collecting qualitative data online through interviews, observations, participatory and arts-based research and a wide range of posts and documents. Analyzing data and reporting findings Written by a scholar-practitioner in e-learning and online academia with 15 years’ experience, this book will help all those new to online research by providing a range of examples and illustrations from published research. The text and accompanying materials will offer discussion and assignment ideas for ease of adoption.

Internet Research Skills is a clear, concise guide to effective online research for social science and humanities students. The first half of the book deals with publications online, devoting separate chapters to academic articles, books, official publications and news sources, which form the core secondary sources for social science research. The second half of the book deals with the open web, a vast and confusing realm of materials, many of which have no direct print counterpart. The third edition has been updated throughout and now includes: - coverage of cutting edge online services as well as newly developed approaches to using online materials - a new chapter on organising your research and internet research methods - additional material on the use of social networks for research. - illustrations, examples and short exercises to help you put what you learn into practice. Internet Research Skills is an invaluable guide for undergraduate students carrying out research projects and for postgraduate students working on theses and dissertations.

For a company to embrace market research as a facilitator of change, it must be willing to take the approach that makes the most impact on its organization. That approach is the key in making a difference using market research. In this guide, author Anne Beall shares her unique procedure for conducting strategic market research. With more than fifteen years of experience in conducting market research, Beall details the strategic principles she has developed that impact the way in which market research can inspire and change an organization. Strategic Market Research discusses identifying the strategic questions that will help a business; using the right research techniques to answer these questions; obtaining the level of depth required to have insight; reading the nonverbal communications of research respondents when doing qualitative work; identifying the emotional aspects of human behavior; using statistical analyses to understand what drives markets; going beyond the data to interpret the results and make strategic recommendations. In addition to addressing both qualitative and quantitative research, Strategic Market Research provides real-life examples illustrating the application of these concepts in various scenarios, including businesses and non-profit organizations. Implementing the strategic approach from the beginning to the end of a project provides information that promotes change.

In an era of constrained research budgets, online interviewing opens up immense possibilities: a researcher can literally conduct a global study without ever leaving home. But more than a decade after these technologies started to become available, there are still few studies on how to utilize online interviews in research. This book provides 10 cases of research conducted using online interviews, with data collected through text-based, videoconferencing, multichannel meetings, and immersive 3-D environments. Each case is followed by two commentaries: one from another expert contributor, the second from Janet Salmons, as editor.