There is a large disconnect in online research.
The largest, most profile, highest value and most widely practiced side of online research was created out of a high demand to analyze the large amount of consumer data that is constantly being created and largely public available. This tremendous demand led to research methods that were created in relative haste. Math and programming skills thrived in a realm where social science barely made a whisper. The notion of atheoretical research grew. The level of programming and mathematical competence required to do this work continues to grow higher every day, as the fields of data science and machine learning become continually more nuanced.
The largest, low profile, lowest value and increasingly more practiced side of online research is the academic research. Turning academia toward online research has been like turning a massive ocean liner. For a while online research was not well respected. At this point it is increasingly well respected, thriving in a variety of fields and in a much needed interdisciplinary way, and driven by a search for a better understanding of online behavior and better theories to drive analyses.
I see great value in the intersection between these areas. I imagine that the best programmers have a big appetite for any theory they can use to drive their work in a useful and productive ways. But I don’t see this value coming to bear on the market. Hiring is almost universally focused on programmers and data scientists, and the microanalytic work that is done seems largely invisible to the larger entities out there.
It is common to consider quantitative and qualitative research methods as two separate languages with few bilinguals. At the AAPOR conference in Boston last week, Paul Lavarakas mentioned a book he is working on with Margaret Roller which expands the Total Survey Error model to both quantitative and qualitative research methodology. I spoke with Margaret Roller about the book, and she emphasized the importance of qualitative researchers being able to talk more fluently and openly about methodology and quality controls. I believe that this is, albeit a huge challenge in wording and framing, a very important step for qualitative research, in part because quality frameworks lend credibility to qualitative research in the eyes of a wider research community. I wish this book a great deal of success, and I hope that it is able to find an audience and a frame outside the realm of survey research (Although survey research has a great deal of foundational research, it is not well known outside of the field, and this book will merit a wider audience).
But outside of this book, I’m not quite sure where or how the work of bringing these two distinct areas of research can or will be done.
Also at the AAPOR conference last week, I participated in a panel on The Role of Blogs in Public Opinion Research (intro here and summary here). Blogs serve a special purpose in the field of research. Academic research is foundational and important, but the publish rate on papers is low, and the burden of proof is high. Articles that are published are crafted as an argument. But what of the bumps along the road? The meditations on methodology that arise? Blogs provide a way for researchers to work through challenges and to publish their failures. They provide an experimental space where fields and ideas can come together that previously hadn’t mixed. They provide a space for finding, testing, and crossing boundaries.
Beyond this, they are a vehicle for dissemination. They are accessible and informally advertised. The time frame to publish is short, the burden lower (although I’d like to believe that you have to earn your audience with your words). They are a public face to research.
I hope that we will continue to test these boundaries, to cross over barriers like quantitative and qualitative that are unhelpful and obtrusive. I hope that we will be able to see that we all need each other as researchers, and the quality research that we all want to work for will only be achieved through the mutual recognition that we need.
