Theme 4: Quantitative research

I’ve read the paper “Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?” by Ioannis Leftheriotis and Michail N. Giannakos. The paper was published in Computers in Human Behaviour, which has an impact factor of 2.067 (2013) and the articles are being peer-reviewed, confirming the high quality. The main purpose of the study is to see if social media is being used in the workplace and if it’s related to the workers performance? The study contains 1799 people from 33 different companies working in the insurance sector in Greece and the main research questions are:

• RQ1: Do the employees of insurance industry make use of social media for work purposes?
• RQ2: What motivations (values) does someone have for using social media for work purposes?
• RQ3: Does the use of social media for work impact employees' work performance?

(Leftheriotis & Giannakos, 2013)

To answer these questions questionnaires were handed out at the companies (83%) or performed online. The employees had a total of 2-3 days to finish the questionnaire before the researchers returned to pick them up (the online surveys were open for 2 months). The attendance in the study was voluntary and no rewards were handed out to the participants.

The benefits of using questionnaires are the fact that they are easy to hand out, you get a lot of information and they are easy to analyze. Meanwhile, the possibilities for misinterpretation of the questions are higher, than say, during an interview where the participants could ask for explanations to terms they don’t understand (Wikipedia, 2013b). That’s why I like the fact that the term “social media” was presented with examples such as Facebook, Twitter, Blogs and LinedIn in order for the participants to fully understand the term. The questions about perceived motivation was measured on a 5-degree scale from “Strongly disagree” to “Strongly agree” which is an a widely used and accepted instrument in research (Cohen et. al., 2000:253) that makes the analyzing of the answers easier.

In order to be certain that the data they received from the questionnaires are reliable the researchers makes several types of reliability and validity checks. I don’t have to much knowledge about this from before so it was nice to see the amount of work it took for them just to establish the fact that the data was correct (even though they don’t go into the exact methods being used).

The study was conducted almost equally between men (52%) and women (48%), with a variety of age groups and with a large number of people (1799), but there are still some limitations. The authors present a couple at the end of the paper; the study was made only in Greece and only within the insurance sector, which makes it questionable if you can generalize the results further. Another limitation is the fact that the work performance is measured from the employee’s self-assessment, which could make it biased.

But the biggest mistake I think is the fact that they don’t make a clearer distinction between the different social networks. If such a distinction had been made, they would be able to say which social networks are contributing to the performance and which are not. Now they just bunch them all together, and maybe some social networks are far better than others at contributing to the work performance, but sadly we don’t know if that’s the case now, since they never ask a more specific question of which social network(s) the participants are using.

Quantitative methods vs. Qualitative methods

One advantage of using questionnaires is the fact that it’s easy to hand out if you’re using online forms. You also get a higher response rate than if you were to mail them out physically (Fondell et. al., 2010). Another positive way of using the high number of participants as Fondell et. al. did is that it’s easier to draw conclusions and in some way make generalizations about the results. A limitation, as I wrote earlier, is the possibility for misinterpretation from the participants.

If Fondell et. al. would have wanted to get more qualitative data they may used interviews or focus groups instead. While they don’t give as much data, they could be beneficial if you want more specific information on particular cases. Qualitative methods explain the how’s and why’s. They give room for interpretation (Wikipedia 2013a), which could be both positive and negative.

Resources

Cohen, L., Manion, L., & Morrison, K. (2000). Research methods in education. London: Routledge.

Fondell, E., Lagerros, Y. T., Sundberg, C. J., Lekander, M., Bälter, O., Rothman, K., & Bälter, K. (2010). Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(2), 272-279.

Leftheriotis, I., & Giannakos, M. N. (2013). Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work? Computers in Human Behavior, 31(0), 134–142. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2013.10.016

Wikipedia (2013a). Qualitative research. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualitative_research            (2013-11-29)

Wikipedia (2013b). Questionnaire. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Questionnaire                               (2013-11-29)