Reflective Journal

Today we talked about quantitative data via surveys. The two papers we discussed were John Bertot’s paper “Web-based surveys: Not your basic survey anymore” from Library Quarterly and “Survey research and libraries: Not necessarily like in the textbooks” also from Library Quarterly.

A couple of interesting topics were brought up: survey question changes in longitudinal studies, advantages of web surveys, and importance of quantitative vs qualitative.

One of the things I’m going to try to do in this reflective journal is to relate what we talked about to my previous and future research.

I have not had to do surveys yet for my research. Most of the ones I planned for the Qualitative class were just academic practices. I could see myself using a branching survey for my research on co-designing educational video games especially once the game is designed and it is being “tested” with groups. A generalized survey could give me data on what kinds of video game systems are in the house hold, hours playing games, computers, economic data, etc. A post-play survey would give me some quantitative data with Lichert scales on the opinions about the game play.