Peer Review Assignment and Surveys
0Monday, October 29, 2012 by Unknown
For the Peer Review assignment I have chosen to look at Harkness's "A Pocket Full of Learning: Podcasting in American Colleges and Universities". Harkness used survey methods in order to gain a basic understanding of the ways in which higher education institutions use podcasts to enhance teaching and learning. One thing that interests me is her sampling method; she chose a purposeful sample of 254 respondents using media press releases and institutional web pages. From this list she emailed people using addresses found online; I wonder how she went about doing this, and what kind of letter was sent along with her survey in order to convince people to take time to fill it out. Indeed, she seems to have had a fairly low response rate (30%?).
Furthermore, I wonder about the purposeful sampling method; as she writes, "the search for evidence of podcast use should not be considered exhaustive or complete" (pg. 9). Was it right to email only people at institutions that had seen relative success with podcast use? Luker would argue that yes, this was appropriate, since salsa-dancing researchers want to "discover the relevant categories at work" (pg. 102). Harkness chose a data outcropping of higher education institutions that was known to have used podcasts, which is what her research is primarily interested in; her sample is representative of the larger phenomenon, as Luker writes, and not the larger population. Harkness insists that her findings "cannot be generalized across all institutions of higher learning in the United States" (pg. 10).
Consequently, her findings don't seem to say anything too conclusive about podcast use, and I am interested to know the reason for this. Is it because of the small sample? What questions were included in her survey? Is it because podcast use is relatively new and hasn't been appropriately studied before? Or because best practices for podcast use have yet to be developed? A better understanding of survey methods will hopefully shed some light on this.
Furthermore, I wonder about the purposeful sampling method; as she writes, "the search for evidence of podcast use should not be considered exhaustive or complete" (pg. 9). Was it right to email only people at institutions that had seen relative success with podcast use? Luker would argue that yes, this was appropriate, since salsa-dancing researchers want to "discover the relevant categories at work" (pg. 102). Harkness chose a data outcropping of higher education institutions that was known to have used podcasts, which is what her research is primarily interested in; her sample is representative of the larger phenomenon, as Luker writes, and not the larger population. Harkness insists that her findings "cannot be generalized across all institutions of higher learning in the United States" (pg. 10).
Consequently, her findings don't seem to say anything too conclusive about podcast use, and I am interested to know the reason for this. Is it because of the small sample? What questions were included in her survey? Is it because podcast use is relatively new and hasn't been appropriately studied before? Or because best practices for podcast use have yet to be developed? A better understanding of survey methods will hopefully shed some light on this.
