Through inductive questions we ask in RG posts and answers (considered as transcribed text) received from RG members, can we based on these inputs (questions & answers) available in RG to perform qualitative data analysis, writing and publishing articles?
Performing above will do away face to face interviews and transcribing verbal to written text – do you think this approach of qualitative data collection is acceptable in qualitative research?
Yes of course, the data can be collected from different ways.
I do not think Q & A in Researchgate forms an acceptable basis for qualitative research and data analysis. However I believe publications made available by researchers on Researchgate should be acceptable as academic sources, e.g where they are used for critical analysis, except where research governance and ethics may be breached.
Dear Han,
let me say that I have been wondering for some time about the use of contents within RG and information retrievable from the discussions...by the members themselves.
If I understood your question correctly, you wondered about the possibility to perform qualitative data analyses from the answers within RG's Q&A and conduct a study (resulting in a publication) basing on them.
If this is what you meant, I might see limitations in the approach you considered, which at the end of the day makes me say "to me, no, it could be not acceptable to do that". I will explain my point, naturally. My concern is on the information that researcher misses about the characteristics of the sample of people being "interviewed" (that is, people answering to a question): these pieces of information pertain demographics, level of expertise within a specific field (e.g., for how many year this person has been working in that industry or position) and so forth. I believe that knowing this information is a prerequisite in order to argue on the answers being collected via RG's answers and prove the validity of the resulting findings.
Following this, I believe also that actually data analysts of RG itself might analyze a lot of data and draw very interesting conclusions from them. For instance what is the "new big thing" being discussed by scientists or what is their sentiment on a certain topic, and drill down this information according to the geographic area, the sector, the socio- political context, etc.
Nevertheless, coming back to the researcher seeking for data, I can see RG as a good tool to spread a questionnaire for instance, by simply posting the link to it to his/her personal network (as many people do already on Facebook). In this way, the researcher can "control" the sample by asking for the data I mentioned before (and remove the outliers if any) and hopefully widen the number of respondents.
I hope I addressed the discussion you aimed to promote according to the perspective you expected.
Best wishes
Ilaria
Data can be collected in a number of ways.
Collected data from Q&A is almost certainly not randomly selected.
However, such data can serve as the basis of both qualitative and quantitative research as long as the method of collection is explained in detail and can be reproduced.
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