[Air-L] Viral email dissemination as a sociological research methodology - some questions

Taryn Ferris tarynferris at yahoo.com.au
Sun May 11 06:31:08 PDT 2008


Hi there.

I'm
quite new to this listserv and have never posted, but I've been quietly
imbibing posts for a couple of weeks, and I'd now like to stick my head
out and ask a few questions... 

I'm currently analysing the
results from a small (pilot) online research project I have conducted,
and to date, I have not been able to locate anyone within the field of
sociology in particular who is using similar online methodologies. I'm
wondering if there's any of you out there who can point me in the right
(or any!) direction...

Broadly, I have utilised viral or
community email dissemination to recruit research participants, and in
doing so have tried to go some way to addressing issues of
researcher/researched power relations (in theory!) by relying on
participant-led take-up. I have created a survey via Survey Monkey and
have placed the link in an email that I have sent to all those within
my social network. I have then asked individuals to pass on the email
(viral or community marketing-style) within their social networks (and
beyond if possible). Within the survey participants are asked if they
would like to participate in a further stage of the study which
requires them to supply an image pertaining to a question posed in the
survey. Take-up of this second stage, is of course, once again,
entirely optional and participant-led.

Forgive
me all you scholarly techies out there - I am very new to internet
research, and really no expert at all on internet technologies, so you
may find my explication below lacking in net-savvy understanding or
terminology. I am first and foremost a sociologist who is interested in
employing internet technologies as a methodology for qualitative
sociological research.

Within this pilot early analysis shows
the methodology has been reasonably successful with around 70% of
survey take-up *not* originating from emails that I originally
disseminated. Nonetheless it definitely has its drawbacks - one major
one being that there is no way (that I'm aware of, and by reading your
posts over the last few weeks I believe it is a drawback of online
research in general - although perhaps something that many of you are
working to change) of measuring the overall success, or failure, of the
research in terms of who *does not* respond (ie who the project reaches
but does not appeal to). One is only aware of the methodological
success rate because of the impossibility of tracing unsuccessful
dissemination *beyond* one's original mail-out. 

Anyway,
I really just wanted to know if any of you were aware of studies
(published or unpublished) outside the realm of marketing where this
type of online methodology is being employed...? I'd love to find some
sociologists experimenting with this methodology, but failing that, any
research utilising viral dissemination methodologies would be of
interest!

Many thanks for you time,

Taryn.

-- 

Taryn Ferris Hands Project
c/o Dr. Irene Gedalof
Course Leader, Women's Studies
Department of Humanities Arts and Languages
Room TM214
London Metropolitan University
166-220 Holloway Road
London N8 OAL
E: taryn.ferris.hands.project at googlemail.com


      Get the name you always wanted with the new y7mail email address.
www.yahoo7.com.au/y7mail





More information about the Air-L mailing list