engleski

Information technology in research methodology: improvement or maybe not?

Introduction. With the development of information technology, the collection of data has changed and during the years we have used different methods of survey collecting data: classical and online. The aim of this study was to compare different methods of data collection checking their advantages and disadvantages. Methods. We have been investigating the attitude toward plagiarism among university students and biomedical researchers. Attitude Towards Plagiarism Questionnaire (ATPQ) was used to measure students' (2009) and researchers' (2010 and 2013) attitudes with two different methods. The first method was classical directly paper-and- pencil method of collecting data used in 2009 (N=239). The second method was online data collection used in 2010 (N=295) and 2013 (N=177). We used the web-service SurveyMonkeyTM (SurveyMonkey, Palo Alto, California) to make our questionnaire easily accessible on-line for all the participants. Participants get an e-mail with an invitation to participate in the research. Every two weeks after the first invitation we send a reminder to fulfill the questionnaire. Results. Collecting data time was three months for every method of collection. Paper and pencil method required more organization and three interviewers in different places, and every survey took up to one hour with a high cost for questionnaire printing and interviewers payments. Response rate was 99% (N=238). We manually carried collected data into an MS Excel table, which requires four days of work and two researchers (because of the check). Online data collection required one researcher and one hour to send all the surveys. The collection data period was longer (up to two weeks), and because of the low response rates we had to repeat the survey three to four times. At all, the response rate was 38% (N=295) in 2010 and 29% (N=177) in 2013. Collected data were ready for statistical analysis. Discussion. Information technology has improved research methodology quality. We have reduced collecting data time and organizational efforts using online data collection services. However, response rate remains the main disadvantage of Internet data collection.

Data Collection ; Medical Informatics ; Attitude ; Plagiarism ; Questionnaires

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