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Apr. 11th, 2010 01:45 pmWow, everyone. I've been overwhelmed with offers for interviews for my project on Dreamwidth and female programmers. Anyone who has done anthropological or sociological research knows that one of the big challenges can be getting people to agree to talk to you, so I wasn't expecting such an excited response! I should know better when it comes to Dreamwidth :)
This suggests to me a couple of things: 1) People are really excited about their experiences with Dreamwidth! (Either that, or they are very angry -- those are usually the folks who want to talk. People who want to tell you how great something is, or people who want to tell you how awful something is. Somehow, I suspect this is the former.) 2) This is a project that deserves a real study, not just my final-paper-for-a-class thing. I'm definitely taking a research break when I'm done school next month, but I may decide to return to this, and do a real study, with IRB approval (ours is called the HSRB, Human Subjects Review Board, and it's their job to make sure that I conduct my research in an ethical fashion. You don't have to go through them if you're doing a class project, but you do if you're going to publish).
Lastly, if you haven't responded yet, I'm going to ask you to hold off. This isn't because I don't think your contributions would be important (I do!), but because I already am likely to have more data than I can use in a study of this kind/size. I only have a few weeks before the end of the semester, and there's just a limit to the number of interviews I can conduct and analyze in that time, and how much I'm going to be able to say in a 20-30 page paper. If we're already in conversation about how/when to do an interview, I'd like to proceed, unless you change your mind.
If you feel like you have something to say, and you don't want to wait for me to decide if I'm going to do a larger, formal study, go for it! Write it! Take a look at this or this, post it in, start your own study. Feel free to link me to it! I'm so pleased to see that this topic generates so much interest.
This suggests to me a couple of things: 1) People are really excited about their experiences with Dreamwidth! (Either that, or they are very angry -- those are usually the folks who want to talk. People who want to tell you how great something is, or people who want to tell you how awful something is. Somehow, I suspect this is the former.) 2) This is a project that deserves a real study, not just my final-paper-for-a-class thing. I'm definitely taking a research break when I'm done school next month, but I may decide to return to this, and do a real study, with IRB approval (ours is called the HSRB, Human Subjects Review Board, and it's their job to make sure that I conduct my research in an ethical fashion. You don't have to go through them if you're doing a class project, but you do if you're going to publish).
Lastly, if you haven't responded yet, I'm going to ask you to hold off. This isn't because I don't think your contributions would be important (I do!), but because I already am likely to have more data than I can use in a study of this kind/size. I only have a few weeks before the end of the semester, and there's just a limit to the number of interviews I can conduct and analyze in that time, and how much I'm going to be able to say in a 20-30 page paper. If we're already in conversation about how/when to do an interview, I'd like to proceed, unless you change your mind.
If you feel like you have something to say, and you don't want to wait for me to decide if I'm going to do a larger, formal study, go for it! Write it! Take a look at this or this, post it in
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