Explicit vs Implicit Knowledge

Knowledge

• Explicit knowledge is formal or codified, found in documents like reports, policies, manuals, standard procedures, databases, books, and magazines
• Implicit knowledge is informal and uncodified, comprising values, perspectives, norms, and knowledge stored in minds

Types of Explicit Knowledge

• Prescriptive/normative knowledge provides rules, guidelines, or best practices, often including standards, policies, and recommended actions
• Evaluation/value knowledge involves judgments, opinions, or assessments about worth or effectiveness, based on criteria, principles, or evaluation
• Explanatory/declarative knowledge explains why a phenomenon occurs, providing facts and explanations, often including cause-and-effect relationships
• Descriptive/conceptual knowledge is the most fundamental, describing a phenomenon with its characteristics, organizing, and classifying information by defining characteristics, categories, or attributes

Sciences

• Natural science examines the physical world by setting up and testing hypotheses and seeking explanations through observations, it uses positivism(facts) and surveys(statistics)
• Social science examines humans and society by studying human behavior and social patterns
• Hermeneutics is the study of the theory and method of interpretation, it seeks to uncover deeper meanings by considering historical context,author intent, and the perspective of the interpreter

Pillars of Research - Typical Paradigms

• Positivism focuses on facts that can be seen, measured, and proven to find general rules
• Realism believes that reality exists on its own, suggesting scientific ideas describe a world unaffected by beliefs
• Interpretivism focuses on understanding human actions by looking at the meanings and social situations they create, using methods like interviews or case studies
• Pragmatism finds practical solutions that work well in real life

Research Approaches

• Scientific research aims to establish facts
• Deduction is a logical process applying a general rule to specific cases for a certain conclusion
• Deductive research is confirmatory, testing existing theories by collecting and analyzing data, using a top-down approach
• Induction is a reasoning method drawing general conclusions from specific observations or evidence, the conclusion is probable but not certain
• Inductive research is exploratory, discovering new patterns, theories, or relationships from collected data
• Abduction starts with an observation to find the most likely explanation, even if not guaranteed
• Abductive research is interpretative and creative, focusing on the best explanation for incomplete observations, often used when neither pure deduction nor pure induction is sufficient

Research Approaches in IS/IT

• Action Research (AR) is a problem-solving which researchers collaborate with practitioners to address real-world issues while generating academic knowledge
• Design Science Research (DSR) creates and evaluates innovative artifacts (frameworks, models, algorithms, or systems) to solve practical problems
• Technical Action Research (TAR) focuses on technical problem-solving within IT environments, often involving software or system improvements

Computing and Information Systems

• Computing involves designing and constructing hardware and software systems, processing, structuring, and managing information, solving problems, and making computer systems behave intelligently
• Information Systems (IS) focuses on how technology supports decision-making, information capturing, storage, processing, and analysis
• Informatics is concerned with the design, development, implementation, management, and use of information systems, integrating concepts from computer science, management, business, and social sciences
• Computer science studies computers and algorithms, including their principles, applications, and impact
• Information Technology (IT) is the systemic approaches to select, develop, apply, integrate to accomplish individual, organizational, and societal goals

Literature Review

• A literature review is a structured analysis of existing research and scholarly work related to a specific topic including a critical summary, synthesis, and evaluation of published studies, theories, models, and frameworks
• The goal is to establish knowledge, identify gaps, and position new research
• Understanding existing research
• Identifying gaps where further research is needed
• Develop a theoretical framework
• Compare different perspectives that identifies conflicting findings, methodologies, and debates

Systematic Reviews

• A systematic review evaluates and interprets all available research related to a specific research question, topic, or issue
• Literature reviews give a broad overview of a topic by summarizing and discussing existing research
• Systematic reviews follow a structured and rigorous process to analyze all relevant studies

Surveys

• Surveys are questionnaires used to gather data from a larger sample within a set time
• Delivery options include face-to-face, phone, and digital
• Investigates knowledge, opinions, behaviors, and perceptions
• Steps include defining variables, developing questions, validating, and piloting
• Validity concerns how well it measures its purpose, reliability concerns how consistently it does that
• Expert reviews focus on validity, while piloting focuses on reliability
• Ethical considerations are needed, minimize harm and discomfort, preserve privacy as much as possible, inform participants about studies, and ensure voluntary participation

Sampling

• A sample is needed because not everyone will answer
• Random sampling gives everyone equal chance, it is the gold standard, but expensive
• Stratified sampling splits the population to ensure a greater spread
• Convenience sampling recruits participants close at hand such as friends and family
• Purposive sampling selects "high-value" respondents to generate valuable data
• Sampling bias is inevitable, non-response bias is variant of sampling bias

Experiments

• Used to identify dependable relationships between a cause and its effects and to identify conditions under which such causal relationships hold
• An experiment is a test under controlled conditions to demonstrate a known truth, examine the validity of a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy
• Most causes are INUS conditions: Insufficient but Non-redundant part of Unnecessary but Sufficient condition

Qualitative Research Methods

• Case studies conduct a comprehensive examination of a specific case like an individual, group, organization, event, or situation, used in various fields
• Ethnography observes the social interaction of users in a given environment by observing life as it happens instead of trying to manipulate it in a lab, and concludes how societies, individuals, and organizations function, provides an understanding of how users see the world and how they interact
• Focus groups gather data through a small number of carefully chosen individuals
• Interviews rely on asking questions to collect data with an intrinsically rewarding activity
• Structured interviews feature predetermined questions asked in a predetermined order, these feature dichotomous (Yes/No) or multiple choice questions
• Unstructured interviews is the most spontaneous, the questions and the order in which they are presented are not set, used when seeking to deepen and contexualise initial thoughts and hypotheses
• Semi-structured interviews blend of structured and unstructured types, often open-ended, used when researching exploratory nature

Qualitative Data Collection

• Participant observation is one type of data collection method by practitioner scholars, used in qualitative research and ethnography
• While interviewing helps to understand how people make sense of their worlds, observing reveals how they act and behave
• Diary studies involve participants logging their thoughts, experiences, and activities over time, providing data for analysis
• Card sorting is a cost-effective way to learn how participants understand, group, and categorize data
• Longitudinal studies involve repeated observations of the same variables over long periods of time, however they time-consuming and cannot avoid an attrition effect

Data Analysis

• Data analysis is the process analyzing a data set
• Qualitative data is non-numerical rich data, textual but also in other formats with a multitude of analysis methods
• Quantitative data is numerical or quantifiable, is best described in numbers also know has statistics
• Content Analysis examines and quantifies words, subjects, and concepts
• Thematic Analysis identifies, analyzes, and interprets patterns in qualitative data
• Grounded Theory develops theories testing existing ones, developing a model based on observed behaviors
• Discourse Analysis examines how language is used in context shape meaning and relationships, understand communication, power relations and assumptions
• Confidence intervals are a measure of how confident the results are. Usually 95%
• Descriptive statistics describe the data. Means, mode, standard deviations
• Inferential statistics how we draw conclusions from the data
• Quantitative data can be of different levels
• Nominal data is categorical data with no meaningful distance or direction between data points
• Ordinal data is ordered or ranked data with distance undefined between steps
• Interval - Ordered data with equal distance between steps (no defined 0)
• Ratio: ordered data with equal distance between steps (defined 0)
• Interval and ratio are often grouped together as parametric, contiguous or numerical data

Thematic Analysis

• Thematic analysis is a systematic procedure for generating codes and themes from qualitative data used for coding interesting Data to make themes from those codes
• Qualitative coding systematically categorizes raw data to identify themes, patterns, or concepts
• Steps include familiarizing with the data, generate initial codes, combine codes into themes, check/review themes, define/refine themes and produce reports
• Follow scientific methods, reference source, and have self-critical discussion
• Bias can result from chosen sample, investigation method and style of analysis

Research Evaluation

• Reliability is whether the study is the same and have same results
• Validity measures whether the study claims it does
• A structured summary and critical analysis of existing research on a particular topic
• It is a comprehensive survey of existing research, theories, and findings It is needed to understanding the existing knowledge, indentifying gaps and finding opportunities

Types of literature reviews

• Simplified literature review is basic summary of existing research with no strict method
• Systematic literature mapping is a broad Categorization to focus on trends
• Systematic literature review follows a structured method to collect, evaluate, and synthesize
• A frequency table lists values to summarize the data and respective counts
• A contingency table is used to analyze relationships between two or more categorical variables
• Informed consent is an ethical principle where participants are fully informed prior to participating
• Privacy ensures that the personal information of participants is kept confidential and protected