Online survey tool: SurveyMonkey

If you are looking for a comprehensive, easy-to-use tool for running an online survey, I recommend SurveyMonkey.  SurveyMonkey makes it easy for you to set up and launch a survey, as well as collect, monitor, and process the results.  If you are doing a small scale survey (10 questions or less, 100 respondents or less) you can even use it for free.  For larger surveys you can purchase a monthly membership, of which there are three reasonably priced levels.

If your respondents don’t have Internet access, I believe there are easy options to print out pdf versions of your survey, which you can then distribute.

What are your favorite survey tools?

Conference: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Relations

Reposting this conference announcement:

Computer Ethics Philosophical Enquiry 2011
Crossing Boundaries: Ethics in Interdisciplinary and Intercultural Relations will provide an opportunity for researchers and students to discuss current ethical and philosophical issues related to information technology from an international and interdisciplinary perspective.  The CEPE conference series is recognized as one of the premier international events on computer and information ethics attended by delegates from all over the world.

CEPE/2011 is hosted by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and will take place in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA,  from May 31 to June 3. Papers will focus on such topics as
Possible topics for papers/presentations:

• Internet Governance
• E-waste
• Intercultural Ethics
• Professional Ethics
• International Ethics, Law and Policy Issues
• Cybercrime, Cyberwarfare, Cyberterrorism and Security
• Internet Research Ethics
• Intellectual Property
• Privacy and Surveillance
• Agency, Autonomy and Trust in Computing Systems
• Accessibility, Inclusion and Digital Divide
• Bioinformatics
• Library Ethics and Intellectual Freedom
• Artificial Intelligence, Agents, Embedded Systems and Artificial Life
• Ethics, Grids and Clouds
• Ethics in Information Architecture and Design

Extended abstracts of 2000 words are due by 15 January 2011 and should be sent to jjmauger@uwm.edu

For full details, please see: http://inseit.net/cepe2011/

Formatting page numbers in Word 2008

You might be writing a document (a dissertation, a thesis, a book) that requires different types of page numbers for different sections.  In dissertations, for example, you want the first three pages (Title page, Signature page, Abstract page) to have NO page numbers, then you want the fourth page (Table of contents) to have Roman numerals, and you want to have Arabic numerals (1,2, 3…) for the main body of your manuscript.  Here’s how you do this in Word 2008 for Mac.

Insert section breaks (specifically, “NEXT PAGE” section breaks) in between the types of pages.  Using the example of the dissertation above, insert a section break after the text on the abstract page, and again after the text of the table of contents.

Now switch off the default settings linking the sections.  Start from the last section and work your way back to the start of the document.  For example, in the body of your dissertation document, double-click in the footer area to show/open it.  (Alternately, use View->Header and Footer.)  The Header/Footer should be activated now.

Now go to View and click Formatting Palette.  This will activate a new pop up window with options for formatting different parts of your document, including the header and footer area.  Click on the Header and Footer section of the pop-up Formatting Palette to see the options.  Now DESELECT the checkbox that says “Link to previous.”  (This is the heart of all the page number/section formatting problems you’re likely to encounter.)  Use the “Go To” buttons to navigate to the headers and footers of the other sections and make sure to DESELECT this check box again such that the headers/footers of the separate sections are no longer linked to one another.  (It’s fine for them to be linked within a section, but not across sections, if you see what I mean.)

You can now insert page numbers of different sorts into the different sections, or you can have some sections with no page numbers at all.

This sort of formatting is easy once you know how to do it, but it’s not very intuitive, and those default settings can really throw a wrench in the works.

And now back to dissertating.

PARC blog posts on ethnography in industry

Here are two interesting and thought-provoking blog posts on ethnography in industry from the folks over at PARC.

The first one speaks to some of the ways in which private industry can utilize and benefit from ethnographic research.  The second one provides an overview of some of the methods that ethnographers use to collect data.

i-conference 2011

The next i-conference will be held in Seattle, WA from February 8-11, 2011.  It is being hosted by the University of Washington’s Information School (aka i-school).  Go team!

The conference blurb says:

“The iConference is an annual gathering of researchers and professionals from around the world who share the common goal of making a difference through the study of people, information, and technology. …we seek to showcase diversity in research interests and approaches, with an eye to demonstrating how the field creates leadership and impact on a global scale.”

Should be a fun and productive event.  See you there!

Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT)

Today I attended a data collection + analysis workshop led by UMass Amherst professor Stuart Shulman.  The workshop focused on two web-based tools developed by Dr. Shulman – an old one (CAT) and a new one (Discover Text).

Here’s a thumbnail sketch of CAT and some of its potential uses.

Coding Analysis Toolkit (CAT)

CAT is a web-based system into which you can upload text files for team-based qualitative analysis.  It is intended primarily for Atlas.ti users who are working on collaborative projects involving a number of coders.  The idea is that you upload your Atlas.ti HUs (“hermeneutic units,” which is just a complicated name for “projects”) into CAT, and then run reliability tests on your coders’ work.  CAT users are probably asking questions like these:

• Is there consistency in how my project’s coders are labeling, categorizing, or otherwise coding particular data?
• Is there consistency across codes?
• Is there consistency across coded excerpts?
• What are the codes or excerpts for which there is strong pattern of disagreement?

If you do not have Atlas.ti data, but are looking for a platform for team/collaborative coding, CAT could also be useful to you.  The key thing here is that CAT is well suited to quickly coding very large batches of texts that are short and highly consistent.

Let me explain.

In a program like Atlas.ti you highlight and code small bits of text (for example, a word, sentence, paragraph, exchange, etc.) that are contained within a larger piece of text (such as an interview, an interaction transcript, an article or news story, etc.)  You are constantly highlighting and “tagging” contextualized data.  You are also able to see visual representations of the codes present in whichever file you are working on.

CAT, on the other hand, seeks to do away with the clicks and drags of selecting, highlighting, and tagging data with your keyboard and mouse.  Instead, CAT allows you to import broken up (or “demarcated”) data, which then gets separated into “pages” on the UI.  That is, instead of seeing one long interview transcript on the screen, I see just the first paragraph on the UI.  In one open field I type in a code (or multiple codes) for that paragraph.  Alternately, I can select a code from my list.  Once this paragraph is coded, I do a simple click to get to the next paragraph.  Again, instead of seeing the whole interview (or article, or transcript, etc.) I just see one piece of it at a time.  It’s like flipping through a book in which each “page” is a small piece of data.

This sort of approach would be well suited to examining archives of Twitter posts, or Facebook status updates, memos, interviews – any type of texts that are limited in size OR can easily be broken up into smaller pieces, and which have a consistent format.

As you can imagine, this would probably not be the ideal tool for you if you needed or wanted to keep your data embedded in its larger context as you were analyzing it.  CAT seems to be less suited to fine-grained analysis than Atlas.ti or other similar programs, but I can certainly see how it would be useful for doing concerted, rapid, first-run group analyses of very large data sets.

Using CAT is free, but you do need to create accounts for yourself as well as your coders.  You can also assign the coders on your project various permissions.

For more, see this introduction and this overview.

Next post:  Discover Text

Transcription services

If anyone is looking for fast and reliable transcribers who charge affordable rates, please contact me — I have a couple of transcribers to recommend.

In the meantime, has anyone tried using callgraph.biz‘s transcription services?  Any reports and/or reviews would be greatly appreciated.

A little motivation for daily writing

Part of any researcher’s work is writing — writing proposals, writing applications, writing reports, writing up findings, and so on.

The best advice I’ve ever had on writing is this:  Don’t put it off.  START NOW.  It’s never too early to begin drafting your work.  All the same, it can be a slog to set one’s mind to writing, and to accomplish one’s writing targets.  It’s something that you really need to get into the habit of, and that takes time, repetition, endurance, and determination.

I’ve recently begun to use an online tool that is helping me develop a writing habit.  It’s called 750 words, and it’s a site worth trying if you are interesting in getting motivated to write on a daily basis.

Here’s how it works.  You set up a profile on the site, and, at your request, the site will send you a daily reminder to log in and write.  The writing that you produce is private — nobody sees it but you. You are held accountable for writing 750 words or more a day.  When you meet that goal, you get various virtual high fives from the site.  After a certain number of days/words, you also begin to get little (virtual) badges.  You can also set up your own private goals and rewards for yourself.

There’s something very pleasant about seeing your daily goals met, and getting that instant recognition (of sorts) of the accomplishment.  If you simply need a bit of a prod to sit yourself down and get those words out of your head and onto your computer screen, then I highly recommend it.

Oral consent for distal interviews

One thing that I’m interested in learning more about are the rules and expectations regarding informed consent at universities and organizations outside the United States.  Obtaining informed consent for interviews is a must when you are doing research at a U.S. American university, whether you are a student or a faculty member.  U.S. American universities also have official Human Subjects Committees that vet your project and grant you permission to proceed.

As I’ve blogged about before, I’ve had to conduct distal interviews for several of my projects.  Obtaining informed consent when you don’t get to meet your interviewees face-to-face is not difficult, and can be done orally.  Today I’m posting the approved script for getting oral informed consent that I used on my latest project.  This might come in handy if you need to prepare a similar script for your own university’s HS Committee:

Oral Consent Script for Recorded Phone or Skype Interviews

Hello, this is (your name), the researcher from the department of ( ) at (University ABC).  Thank you for scheduling this call with me.

As you know from the email you received, I want to better understand (topic of research). I am interviewing people who ( ).  I hope the results of this study will help us ( ). You may not directly benefit from taking part in this research study.

If you choose to be in this study, I would like to interview you about ( ). The interview will last about XX minutes and will focus on ( ).  For example, I will ask you about A, B, and C.  You do not have to answer every question.

Some people feel that providing information for research is an invasion of privacy.

Taking part in this study is voluntary. You can stop at any time.  I will audio-record the interview with your permission.  I will transcribe (write down the words from) the interview and destroy the recording by (date). [Here you should describe what you’ll be doing with the data, how you’ll protect each person’s identity, whether or not the data will be anonymous, how the data will be stored, etc.]

Do you have any questions?

Do you give your permission for me to interview you?

May I record the interview?

If you have questions later, you can reach me at by phone at ( ); on Skype at ( ); or by email at ( ). Although I keep Skype messages and e-mails private, I cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent online through those channels.

Transcription made easier?

Anyone in the business of analyzing talk knows that with every interview, focus group, or interaction comes the laborious task of transcribing it.  When I’m really speedy I can transcribe 15 minutes of talk in about one hour, but that’s only a rough cut that doesn’t include Jeffersonian notations.  When I’m adding those in, it nearly doubles the transcription time.

(Note:  The Jeffersonian Notation system, developed by the late Gail Jefferson, who was an acclaimed Conversation Analyst, is a set of notations/markers that can be used to preserve phatic and other paralinguistic qualities of speech.  See this Glossary of Transcript Symbols by Gail Jefferson herself.)

Is there anything to make transcription easier, short of paying someone else to do it for you?  This week in the NY Times, David Pogue wrote an enthusiastic review of  Dragon NaturallySpeaking for Windows.

Dragon NaturallySpeaking is a newly revamped and (according to Pogue) much improved voice recognition software package.  I don’t have a copy of it myself, but it sounds like it might be a great tool for generating good (not perfect) rough cuts of recorded talk.  Even better, the professional, premium, and home packages all have multiple language capabilities, including English, Dutch, French, German, Italian and Spanish.  The downside is that Dragon NaturallySpeaking is only available for PC.  However, Nuance, the company behind Dragon NaturallySpeaking, does offer a software package called MacSpeech Dicate for us Mackies.

If I paid the $100-200 for the home or premium versions and had my transcription time greatly reduced, I’d think it well worth the price.

Any insight on this?