Ever more researchers in the social sciences and market research are interested in using the benefits of the internet to obtain data, and as this book shows online studies can address many questions that are asked by social scientists. This unique text provides comprehensive and up-to-date information, from the basics upwards about online research methods, technical approaches to data collection, and the quality and limitations of data collected online. Included among the twenty-three chapters, written by leading online researchers from Europe and North America are ones investigating the implementation of both reactive and non-reactive methods of data collection. The studies reported utilize Web-based questionnaires, web experiments, observations of virtual worlds, case narrations, content analyses, and analysis of mailing-lists and other log data. In addition to featuring various fields of research in the online environment and reporting the results of such studies, this book also seeks to bridge a gap between internet scientists in Europe and the US. In the past, researchers have tended to work on similar projects without collaboration: this book represents a joint effort among these researchers.
Contributors in survey research and methodology, organizational psychology, and social sciences discuss aspects of online research in the social sciences, technical approaches to data collection, and the quality and limitations of data collected online. Studies described here used Web-based questionnaires and experiments, observations of virtual worlds, and analysis of mailing lists. Batinic teaches organizational and social psychology at the University of Erlangen-Nueurnberg. There is no subject index. Annotation (c) Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
Arvustused
Online research from an international perspective: the latest developments and techniques for social scientists and others interested in exploiting the opportunities the internet provides.
Web surveys - an appropriate mode of data collection for the social
sciences, Wolfgang Bandilla; Internet surveys and data quality - a review,
Tracy L. Tuten, David J. Urban and Michael Bosnjak; online parcels, Anja S.
Gortiz, Nicole Reinhold and Bernad Batinic; assessing Internet questionnaires
- the online pretest lab, Lorenz Graf; context effects in web surveys,
Ulf-Dietrich Reips; understanding the willingness to participate in online
surveys - the case of email questionnaires, Michal Bosnjak and Bernad
Batinic; generalizability issues in Internet-based survey research -
implications for the Internet addiction controversy, Viktor Brenner;
personality assessment via Internet - comparing online and paper-and-pencil
questionnaires, Guido Hertel, Sonja Naumann, Udo Konradt and Bernad Batinic;
comparison of psychologists' self image and their image on the Internet and
in print, Ira Reitz and Svenja Wahl; ability and achievement - testing on the
World Wide Web, Oliver Wilhelm and Patrick E. McKnight; psychological
experimenting on the World Wide Web - investigating content effects in
syllogistic reasoning, Jochen Musch and Karl Christoph Klauer; online
research and anonymity, Kai Sassenberg and Stefan Kreutz; theory and
techniques of conducting Web experiments, Ulf-Dietrich Reips; contact
measurement in the World Wide Web, Andreas Werner; lurkers in mailing lists,
Christian Stegbauer and Alexander Rausch; forms of research in MUDs, Sonja
Utz; content analysis in online communication - a challenge for traditional
methodology, Patrick Rossler; "Let a Thousand Proposals Bloom" - mailing
lists as research sources, Jeanette Hofmann; studying online love and cyber
romance, Nicola Doring; artificial dialogues - dialogue and interview-bots
for the World Wide Web, Dietmar Janetzko; World Wide Web use at a German
university - computers, sex and imported names, results of a log file
analysis, Thomas Berker; academic communication and Internet discussion
groups - what kinds of benefits for whom?, Uwe Matzat; empirically
quantifying uni-nonresponse-errors in online surveys and suggestions for
computational correction methods, Gerhard Lukawetz.
