Analysis of Practical Problems

Analysis of practical problems by researchers and practitioners is the first phase of design-based research. Exploratory research designs fits well in this phase where we have no hypotheses to test but rather need to obtain the best overview of the problem area (Armstrong, 1970). Cooper & Schindler offer the following insight about exploratory research: “The first step in an exploratory study is a search for secondary literature. Studies made by others for their own purposes represent secondary data. It is inefficient to discover anew through the collection of primary data or original research what has already been done and reported at a level sufficient for management to make decision“ (2008, p. 148).

A search for secondary data can ideally start in one’s own organization since reports from own and previously undertaken research projects may contain valuable information in relation to what has previously been tested, what challenges that were faced, what methodologies that proved to be successful, and reflections concerning further work. Other sources for secondary data are books and papers that are prepared and published by external contributors. A literature review is used to get an overview of the state-of-the-art research within some area (i.e. literature relevant to the topic) besides literature on research methodology and data collection techniques (Hart, 2001). Analytical reading of relevant literature is an essential prerequisite for all research. The results from such studies can be published as independent literature review papers, or as a minor part (i.e. a literature review section) of a study that also uses other research methods. Literature reviews are processes that can be accomplished more or less elaborate and if the ambitions are to search through all the relevant literature it is considered a systematic review. Kitchenham defines this as follows: “A systematic literature review is a means of identifying, evaluating and interpreting all available research relevant to a particular research question, or topic area, or phenomenon of interest” (2004, p. 1).

A systematic review should be explicit about research questions and how sources are collected, so that the review is reproducible for other researchers. This means that the procedures for systematic literature reviews are extensive and time consuming. Most research projects actually use a more pragmatic approach when performing literature reviews. Creswell (2003, pp. 33–35) presents a simple literature search model with the following seven steps: (1) identity relevant key words, (2) search for articles containing selected keywords, (3) point out an appropriate amount of articles (e.g. 50 articles), (4) look over the abstracts and skim the articles, (5) design a literature map or a visual picture of the research literature of the topic, (6) draft summaries of the most relevant articles and take into account that this will be part of your final literature review, and (7) finalize the literature review by structuring the literature thematically or organize it by concepts that are addressed in the study.

In addition to relying on secondary data it is also necessary to collect primary data during the initial and exploratory phase of the research project. This can typically be done by observations or by conducting surveys that make use of questionnaires or interviews. These data collection methods are also typically used by those who have an ethnographical research approach. That is: (1) researchers who study things in their natural surroundings in which the activities of interest normally occur, (2) researchers who aim to describe a holistic view and avoids studying some activities in isolation since this can provide a limited and potentially misleading understanding of that activity, (3) researchers who seek to understand how things actually work rather than evaluating the efficacy of peoples practice, i.e. the aim is to provide descriptive and not prescriptive understandings of people’s behavior, and (4) researchers who seek to obtain an insider’s view of the situation (Blomberg, Burrell, & Guest, 2003).

Today questionnaires are usually developed and conducted using computers and the Internet, and there are numerous things one should take into account when such surveys are to be used. In connection with this doctoral project I have specifically been inspired by Chapter 12 and 13 in Cooper & Schindler (2008), which among other things points

to the following in connection with questionnaires and measurement scales: (1) question construction involves decisions about the questions to be asked, how they should be formulated, and which response strategies that should be used, (2) the objective of the study affects the decision of whether to use open-ended or closed questions and a mixture of these may well be considered, (3) for each question one must consider whether response types such as rating, ranking, categorization, or sorting should be used and how any response scales should be built up (e.g. balanced versus unbalanced rating scales or single-response versus multiple response multiple-choice scales), (4) the Likert scale (which was developed by Rensis Likert) is probably the most frequently used variation of the summated rating scale in which I use in several surveys in this doctoral projects, (5) the order of the questions must be considered carefully and we should start with simple and general questions and move on to more complicated and specialized questions towards the end of the survey.

Interviews can also be implemented in several different ways, e.g. individual interviews versus group interviews, or structured interviews versus unstructured interviews. In this doctoral project I used so-called semi-structured interviews which also sometimes are called focused interviews. A semi-structured interview combines the structural approach (i.e. a set of specific questions where the answers normally can be quantified) with the unstructured approach (i.e. the interviewer suggests the themes as the interview progresses but perhaps with a few specific questions in mind). A semi-structured interview will thus combine specific questions to bring forth some expected information with open-ended and free-response questions that aim to collect unexpected types of information (Hove & Anda, 2005).

The research methods described in this section have largely been used in connection with RQ1 which was to identify the basic motivation regarding why HEIs should apply a concurrent design approach when they aim to deliver e-learning to corporate clients. This has in turn resulted in C1 which is the detected motivation and conditions for applying a concurrent design approach to the design of customized e-learning for corporate clients. This materialized as P1, P2, and SP1 in the early phase of the doctoral project.