Major Themes and Sub-Themes, Paper 1
THEMATIC ANALYSIS FROM:
Dervin, B. and Reinhard, C.D. (2006). Researchers and practitioners talk about users and each other: Making user and audience studies matter - paper 1. Information Research, 12(1), paper 286. Available at: http://informationr.net/ir/12-1/paper286.html
EXPLANATION:
This thematic analysis of the 114
interviews with 83 international and 31 local experts in the three-field
dialogue of researchers and practitioners in the LIS, HCI, and COMM fields,
yielded 12 major themes with 75 sub-themes. In the article above, the themes
are illustrated in Appendix A with 320 quotable quotes from informants.
For interpretations of the 114 expert interviews by 48 students, faculty, and practitioner experts in the three fields, see: http://imlsproject.comm.ohio-state.edu/DIALOGUEessays/AA_ESSAYwebGRID.html
TABLE CLIPPED FROM ONLINE ARTICLE:
Table 3: Narratively structured thematic analysis of what local and international experts had to say about gaps and potential bridges, focusing on disciplinary and research-practice divides in thinking about the uses of user studies
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MOST OF US SAID WE WANT TO MAKE A DIFFERENCE ....by
serving society, being a public good ....by having an impact on system design ....by serving the "bottom lines" of our institutional employers ....by having proven value when the "rubber meets the road" ....we still struggle with the theoretical versus applied research divide |
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MOST OF US AGREED THAT USER RESEARCH ISN'T DOING THE JOB ....we don't understand users -- well enough, in the right ways, in ways that matter ....user research is scattered, shallow, incoherent, not very good ....it consists of endless itty, bitty unconnected pieces ....we are re-creating the wheel without making progress ....we are not building on each others work, on what exists ....we don't agree on the meanings of our terms ....we still struggle with the quantitative-qualitative divide ....we desperately need integration and synthesis ....we may not even know what the questions are |
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WHILE MOST OF US SAID WE CARED ABOUT BEING USEFUL TO USERS, WE HAD SOME FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENTS ABOUT USERS AND USER STUDIES ....some of us said user voices are being systematically left out ....some said trying to understand the elusive "user" is a seriously challenged mission ....some challenged the focus on users ....some challenged whether use self-reports can provide useful data ....some said we need to trust and listen to users even more ....many concurred that studying users is very, very hard ....and some said studying users is expensive |
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FOR THE MAJORITY OF US WHO FAVORED USER STUDIES WE HAD SOME FUNDAMENTAL DISAGREEMENTS ABOUT OUR PURPOSES ....there were tensions expressed between profit versus service orientations ....and within service orientations, between serving user goals versus enticing users to our goals ....we disagreed on whether the results or our work can or must be one-system that fits all |
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MOST OF US POINTED TO ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS THAT MAKE EXECUTING AND APPLYING USER STUDIES DIFFICULT ....the speed of changes in technology, society and people ....the resulting generationl gap ....the lack of funding for studying users ....and the constraints imposed by restrictions on conducting human subjects research |
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THOSE OF US WHO FAVORED USER STUDIES HAD AN UNENDING LIST OF DIFFERENT SUGGESTIONS FOR IMPROVING THE USER STUDY ENTERPRISE, INCLUDING ....more theories and models ....better research designs ....better samples ....more direct observing and inductive qualitative work ....less qualitative work ....more segmentation of users into different sub-groups ....less emphasis on user segmentation and sub-groups ....more studies of users interacting with specific systems and technologies ....fewer studies that focus on users interacting with specific systems and technologies ....more emphasis on contexts and situations ....to study specific moments of information seeking and using ....to get outside university labs ....more longitudinal studies |
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MOST OF US SAID THAT INTERDISCIPLINARY COMMUNICATING ACROSS THE THREE FIELDS THAT DO USER STUDIES ISN'T GOING WELL ....we just ignore each other ....we have no respect for each other ....there are simply no rewards for interdisciplinary contact ....there's no funding of mechanisms to support interdisciplinary work ....and few publishing opportunities |
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MOST OF US CONCURRED THAT INTERDISCIPLINARY CONTACT IS HARD, HARD, HARD ....the isolated silos of academic disciplines make interdisciplinary contact very difficult ....this is compounded by fierce turf wars ....the disciplines and fields are separated by different worldviews, assumptions, and vocabularies ....it's hard to know the rules on the other side of the fence ....academic reward structures force us to be non-collaborative ....as a result, we seem to all live inside our disciplinary blinders |
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MOST OF US AGREED THAT COMMUNICATION ACROSS THE RESEARCH-PRACTICE DIVIDE ISN'T GOING WELL EITHER ....researchers and practitioners too often ignore each other ....they have radically different priorities ....there's little reward or incentive for researcher-practitioner collaboration ....and there are few structures to support research-practice collaboration and translation |
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SOME OF US -- BOTH PRACTITIONERS AND RESEARCHERS -- SAW ACADEMIC RESEARCHERS AS THE PROBLEM ....academic researchers workon toy problems ....they see things in non-human terms ....they are hyper-critical ....they live in ivory towers, disconnected from the everyday ....their research foci are driven too much by self-interest and money ....their research is not useful to system design and practice |
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SOME OF US -- BOTH RESEARCHERS AND PRACTITIONERS -- SAW PRACTITIONERS AS THE PROBLEM ....too many practitioners are anti-intellectual and hyper-critical ....they are forced to focus obsessively on the bottom-line ....they are institution-centric ....they, too, have rules and standards they must meet ....they are too often research-illiterate ....they have to meet deadlines that preclude rigorous research |
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MOST OF US AGREED WE WOULD BENEFIT FROM CONTACT ACROSS OUR DIVIDES ....between researchers in different fields ....between researchers and practitioners ....communicating across our divides will help us do better work ....some among us would relish the clash of competing ideas ....but many expressed worries about the "slash and burn" approach that so dominates our divides ....nevertheless, many of us expressed a readiness to pursue communicating in different ways |
Updated: October 31, 2006