hallo hallo :-)
it has been two months' since my last entry :-P
i have been busy analysing the data from the main study. first, i had to code the transcripts, then i had to verify the coding against the scheme used in the pilot study. once that was done, i had to tally the codes for each session, then enter the tallies into the SPSS database file. once everything was digitised, i was finally able to run some statistical analyses, based on the patterns which surfaced during the pilot. finally, once these preliminary analyses were done, i wrote everything up into my draft :-)
it's all been terribly intense. now i know why some of my former students refer to a PhD as 'permanent head damage'.
the data is all preliminary, but so far there are no great surprises. in fact, in many ways, the data from the main study corroborates the data from the pilot. and thank God the sex ratios are much more balanced now :-)
one of the primary deviations from the pilot is the very high success rate of the orienteering task. i put that down to a much more detailed briefing about the do's and don't's of the task, based on the lessons learned during the pilot. no problems there, after all, that's what a pilot is for, to surface such issues.
as a result of the high success rate in the main study, i've had to use the discourse modes differently in the analyses. no longer do i examine the extent to which successful and unsuccessful pairs use different discourse modes. that would be meaningless because practically every pair in the main study was able to complete the orienteering task. instead i am looking at how the various categories of discourse modes (surfaced during the analysis of the pilot) correlate with the time taken to complete the orienteering task.
one other thing worthy of note at this point of time: john has provided me with two very interesting articles by Bidwell and her colleagues. these papers were apparently presented at last month's OZCHI, which is the annual conference of the Computer-Human-Interface Special Interest Group of the Ergonomics Society of Australia. the conference was held at Wollongong University on the theme of "Supporting Community Interaction: Possibilities and Challenges". Bidwell describes a small study on the Ipswich Campus of the University of Queensland, in which pairs of 'pilots' and 'orienteers' asynchronously used printed photographs (and nothing else) to navigate various 360 metre routes. there are quite a few parallels to what i'm doing, including her use of instruments known as the Information Flow Charts (which are similar to my transcript tables) and the Contextual Information Maps (which are not too far from the peer-critique collages). Bidwell also introduced me to the quite valuable distinctions between various Frames of Reference, namely Egocentric, Allocentric and Extrinsic.
all in all i would say it has been two months' well spent :-)
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