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Research Methodology
This chapter explains the research process, which consists of research methodology, including the research method, mixed-methods research. Then it follows a detail instruction of data collection and data analysis. Generally, this chapter will give an understanding of the whole research process for this thesis.
The link between research questions and methods
Both of interview and questionnaires were chosen as the methods for the research study to provide a better understand of my research problem. By collecting data through questionnaires with closed ended questions and conduct an interview directly with participants who has used Renren.com. The reason I chosen mixed methods is that I get to know participants by asking some closed-ended questions to get some basic information and user preference. Then I chose to use interview with the opened-ended questions that I can gain deeper knowledge into the participant’s thoughts to be further analysed for research question and topic.
Research method
Research design related to the overall strategy that you involve a method of translating research questions into a research project. Research design can provide a general plan for answering research questions and study in a coherent and logical way. (De Vaus,2001)
There are two primary dissertation research methods, qualitative research and quantitative research. Qualitative research is a scientific method to focus on the cultural phenomena, human behavior or belief systems. (L.M.,2008) Quantitative research involves the empirical investigation of observable and measurable variables. Quantitative data is organized in a non-numeric form such as statistics, percentages, etc. (Goertzen,2017). A mixed methods research is a procedure for collecting, analyzing and mixing both quantitative and qualitative research and methods in a single study to understand a research
question. (Creswell, 2012). Base on my research purpose and research question, I decide to use mixed methods with both quantitative and qualitative data to provide a better understand of my research problem.
Survey
Survey is a method of gathering information from a pre-defined group of respondents. The usual questions for survey are closed – end questions, which are followed by response options. (Julie Ponto,2015) Surveys are one of the most commonly used research tools and the most important use is collect data. They provide researchers with a way to collect large amounts of information in easy and relatively quick way. A large number of responses can be obtained quickly, allowing researchers to work with a lot of data. (Wu, 2012) The benefit of using surveys is that they allow researchers to collect large quantity of data relatively quickly. Surveys are cheaper than many other data collection techniques. (Kendra, 2018). I have collected the data from 46 people, who is studying in University or just graduated from school for 1-5 years. They are spread into 5 provinces respectively in China and overseas: Shanghai, Beijing, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Guangdong and the other region out of China. The survey including closed-ended, use multiple choice-answer where respondent can choose one or several options. (Appendix1)
Interview Design
Following the literature review process, the qualitative method is conducted by using the semi-structured interviews. I have selected 10 users from 46 people who have used Renren.com for 2-5 years.
The Interview guide helps interviewees to understand the most relevant information about my thesis subjects. The questions of interview are created to support the research purpose and research questions (Appendix 2). The interview questions comprised of three parts:
web experience, website function and user churning. Overall, interview guide is to help collect the accurate data to fulfill research purpose and research questions.
Data Collection
The choice of the data collection is implication of data analysis. The types of data can be distinguished into primary data and secondary data. Primary data is collected by researcher himself/herself. Primary data is originality, suitability and expensive and time consuming. By contrast, secondary data collected by someone other than the user, such as customer, product or supplier…etc. In general, secondary data helps to complement primary data. (J Grad, 2016)
The interview can be structured in 3 different way, structured interviews, unstructured interview and semi-structured interviews. (Edwards,2013) Saunders, Lewis & Thornhill (2003) highlighted that semi-structured interviews are widely used in qualitative research. This type of Interview is helpful to conduct exploratory. Hence, to fulfil my research purpose, semi-structured interview will be used to collect research data.
Data Analysis
Statistical analysis is the use of statistical methods and relevant knowledge of the object, from the quantitative research. Statistical analysis can integrate with data, situation, problems, recommendations…etc. (Tencent, 2013) Statistical methods can be generally divided into descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Descriptive statistics refers to adding descriptions to objects by group related charts and statistical indicators after obtaining data. Inferential statistics is based on sample data obtained by sampling survey. Inferential statistics based on probability theory and mathematical statistics, scientific inference of the overall situation. (Chen,2017)
In this thesis, I drew the result of 46 people through the statistical chart and filter the data according to specific conditions for analysis.
Narrative analysis is applied in this paper for analyzing interview data I have collected. Narrative analysis is a method of interviewing data to understand how and why people describe their lives as a story. (N.Gilbert,2008). The reason for this method choice is that narrative analysis aims to identify the kinds of stories told about the researched phenomenon, the participants answered interview questions is a way to tell their user stories. I believe that this method would be a good fit for my analysis.
In this thesis, I firstly go through all the data from entire interview and assign text to my data. The text is a brief description of what is being said in the Interview. Due to the fact that all interviewees are users of Renren.com from China. It made more sense to conduct interviews in the mother language of interviewees. I recorded and transcribed all the interview data in Chinese, and then translated the transcription into English. Furthermore, I have sent the both original version and English version to the interviewees to review separately in order to avoid the ethical issues.
Empirical Findings
This chapter presents the empirical finds of our data collection. These findings are based on our survey and interview for users. For providing a better overview, the general information of user background will be introduced first. Then, the details of each questions regarding our research questions and perspective of users will be followed one by one.
User Background
I have collected the data from 46 people who is age from 15-20 accounted for 7.7%, 64.1 percent of people are from 20 to 25, between the ages of 25 to 30 take up of 18%. The percentage of age between 30 and 35 is 10.3.
41 people used to be user of Renren.com which accounted for 89.1%, 5 people never registered for Renren.com before, no one still use Renren.com.
37% of users has registered Renren.com when they study in the junior high school. Users registered from senior high school accounted for 23.9%. The percentage of people who registered from the University is 28.3. Only one person has registered Renren.com when he/she was a primary school student.
Then, I have chosen 10 users who have done the survey to go in depth to investigate the reason for churn based on user experience.
User Usage Perspective
54.4% of users thought the reason of them registered on Renren.com is they have seen other friends start to use Renren.com. 21.7% of people start to use Renren.com to have convenient communication with their classmate. Some users were curious about Renren.com accounted for 19.6%. Only one person has other reason.
39.1% of people used to login to Renren.com almost every day. 10.9% used Renren.com twice or thrice a week. Most of the users used to login to Renren.com once a week accounted for 47.8%. Only one person used once a month. (bar 1)
1 Introduction
1.1 BACKGROUND
1.2 PROBLEM STATEMENT
1.3 PURPOSE AND RESEARCH QUESTIONS
1.4 SCOPE AND DELIMITATIONS
1.5 DISPOSITION
2 Theoretical background
2.1 SOCIAL MEDIA DEVELOPMENTS
2.2 MOBILE INTERNET AND SOCIAL MEDIA
2.3 USER CHURN RESEARCH
2.4 USER CHURN OF RENREN.COM
2.5 CONCLUSION
3 Research Methodology
3.1 THE LINK BETWEEN RESEARCH QUESTIONS AND METHODS
3.2 RESEARCH METHODS
3.2 DATA COLLECTION
3.3 DATA ANALYSIS
4 Empirical findings
4.1 USER BACKGROUND…
4.2 USER USAGE PERPECTIVE
4.3 INTERVIEW DATA
5 Data Analysis
5.1 ESSENTIAL USER’S INFORMATION
5.2 EXPERIENCE OF TARGET USERS
6 Conclusion
6.1 RESULT DISCUSSION
6.2 LIMITATION AND WEAKNESS
6.3 FURTHER RESEARCH
References
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