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Interacting with participants
5:20 with Tomer SharonStudy participants will make or break an Experience Sampling study.
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To prepare for
0:00
an experience sampling research study, you
will need to follow these steps.
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1.,
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carefully think about the question.
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It has to be something about an action
that repeats itself.
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A good example is,
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what was the reason you recently used a
piece of paper to write something down?
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A bad example, what was the most annoying
thing for you,
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the last time you moved to a new house or
apartment?
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It has to be about behavior, not opinion.
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A good example, what was the reason you
recently updated your website?
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And a bad example.
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What do you think about hiring a web
developer for updating your website?
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No yes-no questions.
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A good example.
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What did you want to know recently?
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A bad example.
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Did you buy milk today?
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No quantitative questions.
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A good example.
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What was the reason for the last phone
call you initiated?
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A bad example.
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How many phone calls did you receive in
the past hour?
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2.
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[SOUND] How long?
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Carefully consider the time it'll take
your study participants to
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put into answering your question each time
you ask.
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Keep in mind you can definitely ask a lead
question as well as
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some follow up questions.
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As a general rule of thumb,
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try not to take more than one minute of
your participant's time.
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If you ask the question five times a day,
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the required effort of participation is
five minutes a day.
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If you increase this time,
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you increase the likelihood of getting
less answers from your participants.
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3.
[NOISE] How many notifications?
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Another thing to consider is the number of
notifications you send each day.
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The number should be a trade-off between
the times you think the behavior you
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ask about is happening.
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And a number that would annoy or
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overwhelm your participants to a point
they choose not to respond.
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For example, if you think people take
notes on a piece of paper ten times a day.
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Ask them about it three to five times a
day.
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Ten times is too much.
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Also your estimation might be wrong, and
if you ask ten times a day about something
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that happens only five times a day your
participants will feel uncomfortable.
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Another example is about behaviors that
occur relatively rarely.
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For example, if you estimate your audience
updates their website twice a week.
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Don't ask about it every day.
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My recommendation in this case would be to
ask the question once a week for
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a period of ten weeks.
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If you do that with 50 people, you get 500
reasons people update their sites.
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That's a good number of data points to
learn from.
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4.
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How long should the study last?
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The answer is based on a combination of
the number of times you ask per day and
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the number of study participants.
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Think about a total number of data points
you wish to gather, and
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calculate backwards.
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Take into account that about a third of
the answers you
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want will be lost due to inability to
answer, duplicates, or garbage.
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Here's an example.
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Let's say you want 1000 valuable
responses.
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Considering a third will be lost,
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bring that number up to 1,500 responses
you wish to collect.
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If you ask the question five times a day
for three days, and
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100 people participate in the study, you
potentially get 1,500 responses.
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Get the idea?
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5.
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Choose a medium.
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You need to decide how you're going to
send the question to
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your study participants.
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SMS, email, app, or voice messages are all
good options.
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The best way to go is the simplest way for
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you while thinking about how data will be
collected.
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For example, if you sent text messages to
participants and
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they reply with answers over text messages
as well.
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How are you going to organize all of that
data into one place?
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If you plan on copy and pasting 1,500 text
messages into a spreadsheet, think again.
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You need something simpler.
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I recommend using email through which you
send a simple Google form.
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If you're savvy with more technical stuff,
which I'm not by the way, consider using
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text messages and an IFTTT recipe that
will drop them in a Google spreadsheet.
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6.
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Plan the analysis.
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The main activity you will perform during
the analysis phase is classifying all of
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the answers to the question.
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Classification is no easy task, especially
if you're on your own.
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If you work in a team, have everyone
participate.
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To prepare for a group classification you
need to
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predetermine the categories by which
you'll classify the answers.
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These categories will probably change
after you start classifying answers.
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Yet preparing them in advance will save
you time later on.
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For example, for
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the note taking exercise I shared earlier,
I pre-determined the following categories.
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List of things to buy, things to do,
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in-classroom, expressing thoughts, and
sketching.
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By following these steps you can ensure
your experience sampling research study
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will collect the right data you can
confidently use later.
5:16
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