My Learning Experience in IS366A Qualitative Methods The reason I took a Qualitative Methods class was to learn about qualitative research in detail. Previous classes, such as IS360 and IS362 discussed qualitative research and I learned a few basic concepts, but these classes also covered many other topics, so there wasn%u2019t enough time to go into the subject matter with the depth that this class allowed. The other reason I took the class was to see if qualitative research was a method I would like to use for my own research. Based on the overview I had learned in the previous courses, I wasn%u2019t sure. I knew that subjectivity of the interviewer and participant are important and I wasn%u2019t sure that this would work for my way of thinking which is very quantitative. However, I believe strongly that statements about truth in experiments are based on a universal law of nature concept, such as in Hume%u2019s truism and I would not be comfortable only using statistics to prove my findings. I thought it might work for me to use a research method for which proving a universal truth is not a goal. I learned a lot in this class. From our textbook, I learned about the key theoretical concepts and approaches to conduct qualitative research. I found out that methods can be mixed and matched; there is no requirement that a particular worldview or paradigm be used with a particular approach. For example, a social constructivism paradigm can be used with a narrative or an ethnography approach. From the articles we read and the text I learned what some of the approaches meant more fully where I only had superficial knowledge and not a very good understanding about before, particularly action research and phenomenology.; The field study at Fountain Valley Medical Center Emergency Department provided my first experience into field work and enlightened me on the realities of conducting research onsite. My most important take-aways from the field research are that two observers don%u2019t see things the same way or even see or hear the same things at all, that an observer has to wait a very long time to see something interesting or exciting and maybe this doesn%u2019t happen at all, that planned formal interviews may not happen due to demands on the participant, and that it is very hard to watch, listen, and write at the same time and capture everything. After our field study, we had several opportunities to collaborate, conduct data analysis, participate in dialogue, present results, and do write-ups. I found out how difficult it is to collaborate and to turn transcripts into interesting narratives. If we had more time in the course I would have like to return to UCI and conduct another field study, then compare the two institutions and their users and systems. I also would have like to have more time for theory-building on our results so we could learn that process better. And If we had more time I would have like to actually learn to use Atlas.ti and enter our results to learn how to use the application and to see what other findings may have come out of our data. For those students that had worked in healthcare, entering and ED from a researcher role gave us a valuable new perspective; for those students that had never worked in healthcare, this provided a new and interesting experience.

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I agree that hte core properties were not rigorously justified by Benbasat and Zmud.

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Benbasat and Zmud’s theoretical article argues that the IS research community is making the discipline’s identity ambiguous.  For IS to be a distinct scholarly discipline, it must have boundaries, and research must be conducted within the discipline’s intellectual core.

 

The authors argue that IS has theoretical rigor, respected journals, accredited academic departments, and a professional society, but no dominant design.  The inclusion of interdisciplinary theories, methods, and topics has prevented a central character from being established.

 

The authors then define the IT artifact as the application of IT to enable or support some task embedded within a structure that itself is embedded within a context.  Its nomological net increases the understanding of the IT artifact and binds it to its subdisciplines.  Together, they define the set of core properties of the IS discipline:  a) The IT artifact, b) IT managerial, methodological and technical capabilities, c) Usage, d) Impact, and e) IT managerial, methodological, and operational practices.

 

This article was published to teach writers not to commit errors of exclusion or inclusion.  They must include the IT artifact and at least one of the elements associated with its immediate nomological net, and exclude research models primarily belonging to other disciplines.

 

I agree with the authors that the identity of the IS field is ambiguous.  The purpose of the article was to reveal their development of its core properties. The article’s strength is the complex, but convincing argument, showing why core properties are needed.  Its weakness is that it does not rigorously justify the core properties themselves.  The authors state that the reason for an unambiguous identity is so institutions in the organizational field continue to invest in IS; but don’t explain the current perceived identity or why it is important that the identity be unambiguous on an academic level.

   

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