This page contains references, abstracts, and potentially BRIEF notes for papers that do a good job describing and/or using particular research methods or designs -- in no particular order.

Carter, S., & Mankoff, J. (2005). When participants do the capturing: the role of media in diary studies In Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 899-908). Portland, Oregon.

(from the abstract) In this paper, we investigate how the choice of media for capture and access affects the diary study method. The diary study is a method of understanding participant behavior and intent in situ that minimizes the effects of observers on participants. We first situate diary studies within a framework of field studies and review related literature. We then report on three diary studies we conducted that involve photographs, audio recordings, location information and tangible artifacts.

(notes) This paper is interesting because it talks about tradeoffs in choosing how participants capture their diary data.

Palen, L., Salzman, M., & Youngs, E. (2000). Going Wireless: Behavior & Practice of New Mobile Phone Users. Paper presented at CSCW’00, Philadelphia, PA.

(from the abstract) We report on the results of a study in which 19 new mobile phone users were closely tracked for the first six weeks after service acquisition. Results show that new users tend to rapidly modify their perceptions of social appropriateness around mobile phone use, that actual nature of use frequently differs from what users initially predict, and that com-prehension of service-oriented technologies can be problematic.

(notes) Uses an interesting "voicemail diary" method in which instead of writing diary entries, participants called into a voicemail box to 'speak' the entries.

LeCompte, M. D., & Schensul, J. J. (1999). Designing & Conducting Ethnographic Research (Vol. 1). Walnut Creek, California: AltaMira Press.

(notes) Like a textbook, this book is a practical guide describing what ethnography is, when and where it is used, how to plan a research design, triangulation, choosing a research project, selecting a population and units of analysis, collecting ethnographic data, etc.

Chi, M. T. H. (1997). Quantifying Qualitative Analyses of Verbal Data: A Practical Guide. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 6(3), 271-315.

(from the abstract) This article provides one example of a method of analyzing qualitative data in an objective and quantifiable way. Although the application of the method is illustrated in the context of verbal data such as explanations, interviews, problem-solving protocols, and retrospective reports, in principle, the mechanics of the method can be adapted for coding other types of qualitative data such as gestures and videotapes.

(notes) Detailed guide for coding and analyzing qualitative data in a quantitative way, including preparing the data, developing a coding scheme, operationalizing evidence for coding, interrater reliability, etc.

Ericsson, K. A., & Simon, H. A. (1980). Verbal Reports as Data. Psychological Review, 87(3), 215-251.

(from the abstract) The central proposal of this article is that verbal reports are data. Accounting for verbal reports, as for other kinds of data, required explication of the mechanisms by which the reports are generated, and the ways in which they are sensitive to experimental factors (instructions, tasks, etc.). Within the theoretical framework of human information processing, we discuss different types of processes underlying verbalization and present a model of how subjects, in response to an instruction to think aloud, verbalize information that they are attending to in short-term memory (STM).

(notes) Classic paper on collecting and analyzing verbal protocols.

Jordan, B., & Henderson, A. (1995). Interaction analysis: foundations and practice. The Journal of the Learning Sciences, 4(1), 39-103.

(from the chapter) Interaction Analysis as we describe it here is an interdisciplinary method for the empirical investigation of the interaction of human beings with each other and with objects in their environment. it investigates human activities, such as talk, nonverbal interaction, and the use of artifacts and technologies, identifing routine practices and problems and the resources for their solution. Its roots lie in ethnography (especially participant observation), sociolinguistics, ethnomethodology, conversation analysis, kinesics, proxemics, and ethology. Video technology has been vital in establishing Interaction Analysis, which depends on the technology of audiovisual recording for its primary records and on playback capabillity for their analysis. Only electronic recording produces the kind of data corpus that allows the close interrogation required for Interaction Analysis. In particular, it provides the crucial ability to replay a sequence of interaction repeatedly for multiple viewers, and on multiple occasions.

(notes) Interesting for its treatment of using video data in research.

Collins, A., & Gentner, D. (1987). How people construct mental models. In D. Holland & N. Quinn (Eds.), Cultural Models in Thought and Language (pp. 243-265). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

(from the chapter) Analogies are powerful ways to understand how things work in a new domain. We think this is because analogies enable people to construct a structure-mapping that carries across the way the components in a system interact. This allows people to create new mental models that they can then run to generate predictions about what should happen in various situations in the real world. This paper shows how analogies can be used to construct models of evaporation and how two subjects used such models to reason about evaporation.

(notes) Reasonably detailed description of the interview process.

Schober, M. F., & Brennan, S. E. (2003). Processes of interactive spoken discourse: The role of the partner. In A. C. Graesser, M. A. Gernsbacher & S. R. Goldman (Eds.), Handbook of discourse processes (pp. 123-164). Lawrence Erlbaum: Hillsdale, NJ.

(from the chapter) Conversation is different from other sorts of discourse. Perhaps because we all engage in it so often, it seems simple: People who speak the smae language send and receive a series of messages in sequence. Actually, it isn't nearly so simple, because those messages are jointly shaped on a moment-by-moment basis. Unlike people engaged in monologue or in reading or writing text, conversationalists have the opportunity to rely on their partners in ways that structure the discourse itself.

(notes) Describes a wide variety of experimental designs that have been used to study grounding in conversation, including a discussion of studies involving referential communication tasks.