A modified and more appropriate question would be, “ What experiences were observed on Instagram at Orientation by new students, their families and the campus community?” Still not a perfect question, but it continues to drill down into specifics. Using a qualitative approach, you do not need to have a hypothesis for variables, but it does need to be measurable.įor example, it would be a hard study to approach answering the research question, “ Do new students have a good time at orientation?” when analyzing their Instagram posts while at orientation. In traditional research this is called a research question. Answer the Question: What are you Seeking to Research? This unfortunately might take longer, but will result in a more fruitful result. This is written through a formal research and assessment lens. The final process will be explained in a future post.įor this post, I would like to share how I went about analyzing, through traditional qualitative methods a social media post. I qualitatively coded these social media posts, as well as quantitatively analyzed them. In the midst of the focus groups, I began gathering over 2,000 Facebook and Instagram posts that ranged in dates nearly an entire year. Using 40 college student leaders at two institutions, I gathered a rich amount of data. I began by exploring the topic qualitatively in focus groups. With a mixed methods study, you have multiple phases in your research. Read more about the entire study ( here). Specifically I am analyzing Facebook and Instagram, as those were self-reported as their most used applications. This April I will defend my dissertation, which takes a mixed methods approach to examining college student leaders’ use of and experience with digital communication tools. Were there any common posts? Were there any specific posts that really stood out? Could you describe 3-4 major themes?įor those not familiar with my work, I am in the final semester of my doctoral program.Now do it again, but look for patterns – differences – look with the eyes of a researcher.Scroll through the first 20 posts you see. Turn on your phone, open up Instagram.

Have you ever thought about using social media as data in assessment, evaluation and research?

Nvivo discourse analysis