So in my seemingly never-ending literature review for my usability study I have come across an author who likes to discuss epistemological beliefs of information seekers. As I have come to understand this topic (which I'm not sure if I do) it is the perception that researchers have regarding the search process. This author, who shall remain nameless, compares her finding from two groups:
Group 1: 20 Yale fourth year students who were in the process of writing a paper
Group 2: 15 University of Wisconsin-Madison Freshman
Additionally, this researcher tries to take findings from the following study (described below) and compares it to the two above. Please let me know if you see ANY problems here.
2002 Study: involved 15 faculty and doctoral students. The findings of this study were compared to the studies above.....There is no way in holy hell that 15 faculty and doc students have the same research behavior as undergrads. EVEN IF the findings were the same there is NO FREAKING WAY that there reasons were.
Now, call me crazy, but I don't think there is any way that anyone could compare these two studies (especially the third). Even if the beliefs of these two groups were identical (thus giving an across the board continuity) I don't think that as a researcher you could say these are similar.
Am I splitting hairs here?
Just a disclaimer: I have attempted to boil down a lot of information here and if you want the full citations just email me and I will be happy to provide them.
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1 comment:
you are not splitting hairs. i find a problem even in comparing students from Yale with students from UW-Madison. Comparing faculty and doctoral students to fourth year students and freshman is akin to comparing high school seniors to eighth graders.
There is an inherent problem when comparing freshman and seniors in college. Sure, there might be some similarities, but the commonalities would be scarce. But, then again, I haven't read the study.....
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