Task: You have to describe “characteristics of online medium” within the research context of online data collection. In my research, I have developed online survey mechanism by which researchers can create online surveys and deliver them to relevant participants. It is also possible to log participants’ activities (e.g., open questionnaires, chose answers, change answers, feeling in open ended questions, switch pages, etc.) while feeling in online surveys. I call this process Respondent Behavior Logging (RBL). Remember, I don’t want you to talk about RBL as a finished product. I want you to talk about the possible characteristics of online medium by which we can benefit to construct idea such as RBL. So, it’s about exploring and understanding opportunities in online medium. You have to use, Herbert H. Clark book – “Using Language” to demonstrate the characteristics of online medium. You must need to find this book. You can find a preview in Google books https://books.google.se/books?id=DiWBGOP-YnoC&redir_esc=y. In this book, he talks about face-to-face communication vs online communication. You should not talk about face-to-face communication since it is not relevant in my research. What you should do, is to talk about the features of online communication. To best understand this, I give you another paper “Supporting Therapist” where in table 1, they talk about Clark model and features the concepts like visibility, recordlessness, simultaneity, extemporaneity, identity and so on. So, I want very similar to this, where you basically talk about these features from Clark book in terms of online data collection. And then in the very last page, you talk about paper vs online data collection. That means, I want you to first describe characteristics of online medium using Clark book (visibility, recordlessness, simultaneity, extemporaneity, identity and so on) similar to the paper “Supporting Therapist” but without using face-to-face therapy discussion (not relevant in my research), and then you derive from all these discussion into the final section where you talk about paper vs online data collection. I give you another paper to help you with the last section “paper vs online data collection”. You need to write in total 4 pages. In last 1 and half page you discuss paper vs online data collection and tie the whole discussion back to my research context where you can talk about opportunities of exploring online characteristics and how this can benefit RBL. Please read my research monograph which I have attached. I give you some brief idea about my research bellow.

Background: My discipline is Information Systems (IS) and my research is about developing an evaluation technique for online surveys. The online surveys are used as part of the treatment process to collect data from participants who are struck by somatic diseases. This is facilitated by U-CARE research program via the u-care online portal. Basically, researchers/therapists/practitioners they conduct studies where participants are put randomly into different groups as part of the treatment process and then provided with care via the online portal. Participants are asked to fill in online questionnaire via the u-care portal in order to deter their health conditions. My research idea here is, I log participants’ activities while they are answering surveys/questionnaires. For example, when respondents open a questionnaire, answer a question, go to the next page, change answers, delete answers, and submit questionnaires and so on. I call this process Respondent Behavior Logging (RBL). The idea here is, by looking into the log data, we can develop a system of enquiry to evaluate the effectiveness of those questionnaires/surveys. Therefore, researchers may then discover shortcomings of questionnaires/surveys i.e., bugs, flaws, or improvement opportunities.

Method: Since my primary area of research is Information Systems (IS), therefore, my research contribution must be in the field of IS among others. I am following Design Science Research (DSR). Basically, in DSR, an artifact has to be developed (i.e. RBL) which has to be unique, relevant, innovative and should be evaluated rigorously. The impact of such artifact has to be significant and solve real world problems. In that regard, the artifact is RBL which is unique in the sense that, no other questionnaire evaluation techniques were found at least in the scientific community within IS that use participants’ online survey activity as such. Now, regarding the development of RBL, we followed iterative design process (i.e., agile software development) until RBL become fully functional. In DSR, design process is very important to show the quality of the artifact and to justify the usage of artifact in real world scenarios. Last but not least, DSR must show significant contribution both to real world and to knowledge base. The real world contribution of this DSR is, RBL is a novel concept and being translated into a software which is now being used in studies within the U-CARE project. The contribution to knowledge base can be recognized due to the fact that, the questionnaire evaluation technique such as RBL is a new extension to the Information Systems (IS) community since there were no credible sources of information to understand how online surveys can be evaluated based on participants usage activities of surveys.