Methods of data collection

a. Quantitative Questionnaire

There are three main approaches to quantitative research: experimental, causal- comparative and correlational (Johnson and Christensen, 2008). The causal- comparative approach was employed in this study.

In causal-comparative research, investigators attempt to determine the cause or consequences of differences that already exist between or among groups of individuals (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006, p.370).

In a simple causal-comparative study, there must be one categorical variable (independent) and one quantitative variable (dependent) (Johnson and Christensen, 2008). However, the independent variable is non-manipulative (Cohen et al., 2007). In this study, the quantitative data collected were compared to examine the relationship between the non-manipulative categorical variables (e.g. gender) and the dependent variables (i.e. favourite game genres). I explored the effects (dependent variable) caused by membership in a group (independent variable).

Quantitative data in this study was collected using a survey questionnaire that was adapted from instruments in the literature (i.e. Kennedy et al., 2008b; Teo, 2013; Pierce et al., 2007).

1. The instrument developed by Kennedy et al. (2008b) is widely used2_{. The}

current study questionnaire used the technology accessibility items from Kennedy et al. (2008b).

2. To measure students’ perceptions of their degree of digital native-ness, the Digital Natives Assessment Scale (DNAS) developed by Teo (2013) was adopted. Although this instrument was only developed recently, the author (Teo, 2013) has tested its validity and reliability. Furthermore, this tool was

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easily administered, and all the factors used in the instruments were aligned with the definition of the digital native introduced by Prensky (2001a).

3. To measure students’ attitudes towards learning mathematics with technology, the Mathematics and Technology Attitudes Score (MTAS) was adapted from Pierce et al. (2007), in which one of the scales (i.e. attitude towards the use of technology for learning mathematics) was tailored to computer games.

4. In addition to developing a questionnaire based on these three instruments (i.e. Kennedy et al., 2008b; Teo, 2013; Pierce et al., 2007), additional questions were added to assist in answering the research problem.

To validate and complement the quantitative data, qualitative interviews were conducted. It is less likely that researchers will make a mistake if they combine two or more research methods (Johnson and Christensen, 2008).

b. Qualitative Interview

There are five main approaches to qualitative research - biography, phenomenology, grounded theory, case studies and ethnography (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006). In this study, phenomenology was adopted. A phenomenological study,

describes the meaning for several individuals of their lived experiences of a concept or a phenomenon. Phenomenologists focus on describing what all participants have in common as they experience a phenomenon (Creswell,

2006, pp.57–58).

A phenomenological study also hopes to gain some insight into the world of the participants, and to describe their perceptions and reactions (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006). Phenomenology study is suitable for research that requires an understanding of several individuals’ common or shared experiences of a phenomenon (Creswell, 2006). In this study, data was collected from students, teachers and parents who had experienced the same phenomenon (e.g. gaming). A composite description of the essence of the experience for all the individuals was developed.

In-depth interview or qualitative interview is the most commonly used method in phenomenology study or qualitative research (Johnson and Christensen, 2008) because it can be used to obtain detailed information about what is in the participants’ mind - thoughts, beliefs, knowledge, reasoning, motivations, and feelings about something (Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006; Johnson and Christensen, 2008). According to Patton (1987) (as cited in Johnson and Christensen, 2008, p.207),

the qualitative interview allows a researcher to enter into the inner world of another person and to gain understanding of that person’s perspective.

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For instance, I wanted to know a student’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings about the use of computer games to learn mathematics. Some of the questions asked during the interview include:

Imagine that one day your mathematics teacher is using a computer game to teach in the classroom, how would you feel? Could you explain the reason behind this?

The interviews were very useful in understanding what the students were thinking and why they thought what they did.

There are four types of interviews: (1) the closed quantitative interview, (2) the standardised open-ended interview, (3) the interview guide approach and (4) the informal, conversational interview (Johnson and Christensen, 2008; Fraenkel and Wallen, 2006). In this study, a combination of closed quantitative and standardised open-ended interview was employed whereby the exact wording and sequence of questions were determined in advance. All participants were asked identical research issues in the same order. This particular type of interview was used so that all respondents would answer the same questions and go through the same interview protocol. It would allow a more consistent comparison of responses because data was exhaustive for each person on the topics addressed in the interview. Furthermore, this could reduce bias due to gender, ethnicity and other demographic or stratified differences.

The interview was voice recorded. The purpose of the audio recording was to assist the process of transcription and ensure that what the participants said were captured completely. The audio recording was sufficient as I was seeking for views and perceptions. No video was captured because I did not conduct any experiment to see how children played computer games. Classroom observation was not used in this study because looking at teachers’ current practices were not going to help me to understand the teachers’ views and perceptions.

In this study two sets of findings were merged and consolidated for the final overall interpretation of data. The convergent parallel design allowed comparison of quantitative statistical results with qualitative interviews for the purpose of validation, complementary for a complete understanding of a phenomenon and illustration of quantitative results with qualitative findings (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2011).

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