In Peter Knight’s Small-Scale
Research, he talks about the effects face-to-face surveying can have on one’s
research when he says, “face-to-face contact may be necessary but may taint the
work” while in other cases “the research is
the main research instrument and the inquiry would be stunted” without the
researcher’s presence (Knight, 2002, p. 50).
My research interest for this class is virtual reference and determining what motivates students to use it. Convenience is an obvious factor because the remote access offers library students services in their own home but I wonder if there are any other factors that compel students to use virtual reference instead of coming in to the reference desk.
One method that I think could successfully determine the students’ motivations for using VR would be to conduct user surveys in various locations (e.g. a print survey at the desk, a telephone interview, and an online survey on VR sites and ‘contact us’ webpages). While the researcher’s presence is not an issue for the surveys conducted online, telephone interviews and surveys offered in person must be conducted by a librarian, whose presence will inevitably have some sort of influence on the user’s responses (e.g. if they had a good in-person experience, perhaps they would already be in a good mood when answering the survey, and document a more positive virtual reference experience). I am wondering if there are ways to successfully eradicate the researcher’s presence as influencing survey responses, and if doing so would even make that significant a difference on the accuracy of user survey results.
My research interest for this class is virtual reference and determining what motivates students to use it. Convenience is an obvious factor because the remote access offers library students services in their own home but I wonder if there are any other factors that compel students to use virtual reference instead of coming in to the reference desk.
One method that I think could successfully determine the students’ motivations for using VR would be to conduct user surveys in various locations (e.g. a print survey at the desk, a telephone interview, and an online survey on VR sites and ‘contact us’ webpages). While the researcher’s presence is not an issue for the surveys conducted online, telephone interviews and surveys offered in person must be conducted by a librarian, whose presence will inevitably have some sort of influence on the user’s responses (e.g. if they had a good in-person experience, perhaps they would already be in a good mood when answering the survey, and document a more positive virtual reference experience). I am wondering if there are ways to successfully eradicate the researcher’s presence as influencing survey responses, and if doing so would even make that significant a difference on the accuracy of user survey results.
Knight, Peter. (2002). Small-Scale
Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications
Do you remember your first visit to Robarts? Wasn’t its lovely brutalist architecture warm and welcoming?
ReplyDeleteRight.
I work in a library that mainly serves undergrads, and come September we can always tell the first year students from the returning students. They are afraid to approach anyone at the desk and will wait until they are cajoled into speaking. I find that the reason why they are hesitant to approach us for help is because they are intimidated. Informing them that there is a virtual reference option, even to answer directional questions seems to put them at ease.
Maybe because we live in an age in which we interact with technology more, and prefer to deal with technology instead of directly dealing with someone face-to-face, virtual reference may be easier to use than approaching someone at a desk in a library.