A Guide to Conducting Online Research

Citation

Mason, D. (2010), "A Guide to Conducting Online Research", The Electronic Library, Vol. 28 No. 2, pp. 346-347. https://doi.org/10.1108/02640471011033701

The internet age has opened up a swathe of new areas for research: there are new sources of data and new ways of collecting it. Many previous books on research design have attempted to fit the new technology into the old framework but this book takes a fresh look at the technology, how it works, what it is capable of, and how to use it for rigorous defensible research.

Although the book focuses strictly on the practical aspects of online research in the new technosphere, the authors go beyond a simple cookbook approach and advance a complete framework to designing qualitative and quantitative research online. It assumes no prior knowledge and takes the reader through the various steps involved, how to choose the appropriate technology, how to adapt to what your institution uses, how to ensure that data is collected ethically and how to ensure that standards are maintained.

It is written in a clear and easily accessible manner, with examples from the author's own research, and printouts of typical online data output. It also has guidance on how to analyse the various forms of data available, and there is a short section suggesting how unorthodox emerging applications such as online multi‐user games, Second Life, and other proprietary products might be used for innovative research in the future.

The book is aimed particularly at senior students, but will be welcomed by academics and practitioner researchers unfamiliar with the new research areas.

There are chapters on e‐mail interviewing and e‐mail based focus groups, and how to research instant messaging systems and online chat rooms. There is a long chapter covering online surveys: design, delivery, analysis, and the strengths and weaknesses of some leading commercial survey packages. The book is notable for covering even the latest online phenomena, wikis, blogs, web sites, e‐commerce sites and other aspects of Web 2.0.

The book is clearly laid out, with tips for the beginner, tables of action points and even screenshots of some of the computer programs the online researcher is likely to come across. Its main strength is that it has escaped the confines of the usual research methods textbook and is able to start from what the technology is actually capable of today, and the consequent rich new data sources that the Internet has generated.

The book might be criticised because it does tend to labour the point about some of the more basic technologies, but given that its audience is the researcher coming to online research methods for the first time, this can be forgiven.

Overall, this is an excellent and timely addition to the literature. It deserves a place on the shelf of every academic and will quickly find its way into the required reading lists of university research methods courses.