The abstracts for the lightning talks are organised by stream below.
Stream One
Session One - Positionality and Ethics
"You're on mute": methodological and ethical issues arising from remote qualitative practitioner interviews
Horton, Jane - University of Liverpool
This lightning talk will explore some of the ways in the qualitative data which I collected during my doctoral research into practitioners' understandings and experiences of the Prevent Duty in educational settings, was influenced and arguably, enhanced by remote methods of interviewing and by my positionality. The pragmatic adaptations made to the research in response to the Covid 19 context generated unanticipated methodological benefits. Firstly, teacher interviews which were conducted over Zoom, when schools were partially closed and practitioners mostly taught from home, facilitated lengthy, and candid reflections on professional practice. Arguably, the testimonies provided insights into ‘backstage reflections’ at a time when the teachers’ geographical separation from the workplace lessened concerns over reputational risk and professional impression management. Secondly researcher positionality, specifically my ‘insider status’ as a teacher, enriched the data and was further enhanced by the additional temporary shared experience of ‘working from home’. Empathy with participants increased the ‘rapport’ throughout the interviews; in many cases, affording practitioners an exceptional and valuable opportunity to reflect on the challenging context in which they work, and in which they are tasked with enacting problematic policies such as Prevent. This talk aims to encourage discussion around positionality in research with practitioners and potential ethical issues raised by the sharing of unguarded, ‘backstage reflections’ during the interview process.
How can I (not) talk about it it: choosing methodology for ethnically challenging research in humanities
Tarasenko, Emma - University of Manchester
Researchers have the power to approach complex matters directly or indirectly affecting human lives. Thus, chosen methods must not only be precise and practical but also sensitive to ethical, political, and legal matters, especially when dealing with authoritarian states and current events.This talk will focus on the case of my own research dedicated to LGBTQ+ grassroots media in Russia and beyond, but can be easily scaled to any challenging topic or field.
Being Ethical in Researching Trauma in the Refugee Context: Is That Real?
Agbaso, Lora - Cardiff Metropolitan University
Trauma and displacement are profoundly sensitive issues. Researching impact of trauma in the adult ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) classroom is a delicate and complex task filled with ethical complexities. Grounded in both scholarly literature and personal experience as a peer researcher with a history of forced migration, this presentation offers reflective insights into the ethical dimensions of conducting research in such delicate circumstances. It also looks into the ways to make research truly ethical, trauma-informed and transformative.
Positionally in an oral history of scuba diving
Smith, Catherine - University of Manchester
I have recently begun the data gathering element of my PhD project on cultures of underwater exploration, which includes qualitative interviews with people who began scuba diving as a sport in the United Kingdom between the early 1950s and late 1990s. Scuba diving changed significantly during this period. Such changes include views about what equipment could, or should be used, the acceptability of actions such as gathering seafood or taking objects from wrecks. My lightning talk will reflect upon the impact of the interviewees awareness of my own status as a scuba diver upon their responses to my questions.
Adapting methodologies: The benefits of online methods for mental health and wellbeing research
Hoyland, Charlotte - University of Manchester
My research focuses on young people’s mental health and emotional wellbeing, with a particular focus on how young people navigate peer-to-peer support.
I began my PhD just before the COVID-19 pandemic in the UK and, like many researchers, adapting my research methods was essential during the uncertainty of COVID-19 and the ongoing restrictions on face-to-face contact. I quickly adapted to online research methods using netnography, credited for its unobtrusive nature, to observe online peer-to-peer interactions to support mental health, followed by online group interviews. Not only has this ‘move’ to online methods enabled me to continue my research during these times of uncertainty, but I believe the use of online methods is beneficial for my participants (and me), particularly when conducting research that involves potentially sensitive topics, such as mental health and emotional wellbeing.
In this Lightning Talk, I focus on the changing landscape of my data collection, necessitated by the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the changing landscape of mental health and wellbeing as a research topic. I will discuss the benefits of online data collection for sensitive topic research, from both participant and researcher perspectives, and some of the challenges I’ve faced conducting research online during and after the pandemic.
Session Two - Participatory Methods
Collaborating further - an international project evaluating sexual health education.
Mannion, Dr Jess - Manchester Metropolitan University
I am a researcher in the Learning Disability Cluster in the Department of Social Care and Social Work in Manchester Metropolitan University, and work with two international research teams. The first is a team of researchers with intellectual disabilities in Ireland and the second is faculty in the University of Cincinnati (UoC), who teach sexual health education to students with intellectual disabilities and want to evaluate this. We hold research meetings online, where a retired professor/ artist sketches cartoons of our meetings as a creative record and for dissemination. I and the Irish research team are holding a visual and creative research methods workshop to teach the UoC faculty how to use these methods when evaluating their sexual health education programme with students who have intellectual disabilities. I am a trained sexual health facilitator and will teach the sexual health education programme to the Irish research team, an action from a previous sexual health project, as this is a barrier they want to overcome. The Irish research team will then evaluate this programme from an Irish context. Later in the project, the Irish research team will become peer educators and teach the evaluated programme to others with intellectual disabilities. The Irish research team have extensive experience of researching in this way but this project is in its infant stages. We are writing and presenting about this experience of collaboration, and also seeking funding. We are learning as we collaborate further.
Hobby Historians: Working with Volunteers as a Research Method
Johns, Susie - Keele University
For my PhD research, I am working with Staffordshire Archives and Heritage Service to explore time perception through Consistory Court records and promote public and volunteer engagement. In Covid times, Teams enabled the project volunteers, several of whom were isolated by age and health vulnerability in the pandemic guidelines, not only to socialise with familiar friends but also to continue to engage with archive material and find areas of interest to embark on individual research beyond the group sessions. The move to online research also enabled me and several volunteers to contribute to the Bawdy Courts blog, seeing our endeavours meaningfully disseminated to the public despite the closure of the archive. Beyond the pandemic, reaccessing the archive in person has enabled the volunteers to contribute to an extensive data set, sampling cases from across 250 years and a vast geographic region, which would not have been possible as a single researcher. Their data collection by skimming the witness depositions for any time or calendar references and recording them for analysis has generated a much broader data set, enabling more comparisons across demographics and chronology than would be practical for one person in the same timeframe. This methodology benefits both the researcher and the volunteer co-creator. Their contribution in the form of local history knowledge is also a key benefit to working in this collaborative manner, as most are keen amateur historians with many years of experience researching local family, church and place history.
Using a co-produced board game as a dissemination and data gathering method
Buckle, Karen Leneh - University of Manchester
This talk will describe an example of creating an original board game as a means of disseminating research findings. It will focus on a game that was created as part of a PhD project looking at a common but under-researched aspect of autism known within the community as ‘inertia’. This collection of difficulties acting on intentions is largely misunderstood, and one of the primary objectives of this community-led research has been to improve understanding by families, professionals and others. Following a workshop about using board games in research, the author developed a card-based game to convey the challenges posed by inertia. Quotes from the qualitative dataset are used to express various aspects of inertia, and the strategies that help to overcome it, from the participants’ own perspectives. The game has gone through several iterations and hours of play testing to address challenges such as making a game that is easy to learn and quick to play, and making something that conveys the frustrations of inertia without making the game too frustrating to be enjoyable. The game is now approaching a final format which can be used to educate professionals and family members about these poorly understood difficulties through the first hand experiences of those who experience them. Furthermore, the game may be used in further studies to enhance interviews and focus groups. The talk will encourage other researchers to consider creative and alternative methods not only for data gathering but also for dissemination of research findings.
Participatory Group Observation: Enhancing Research Rigour and Circumventing the ‘Single Story’ Pitfall
Ibrahim, Anifat - University of Manchester
Trade association membership can be a hard sell in an environment where everyone recognises that there is freedom of association. Exploring the points of divergence and convergence on the value of association membership among members and non-members of a trade association can be problematic, especially when individuals provide compelling rationales for their decision to participate or not participate in the group. This lightning talk demonstrates how participatory group observation serves as a robust triangulation method in a social context with freedom of association. Drawing from fieldwork in Lagos, Nigeria, the study critically appraises participatory group observation’s value for data triangulation in qualitative research. Key benefits include: (1) Corroborating group-level practices, such as poor time management in meetings, which deter non-member participation. (2) Unveiling group dynamics, power structures, organisational nuances, and representation issues beyond individual accounts. (3) Validating key informant data while minimising subjective biases. While not a stand-alone method, participatory group observation enhances the reliability and validity of qualitative research. Importantly, it mitigates researchers’ blind spots, providing nuanced insights into group-level factors influencing associational involvement decisions. Beyond ensuring rigour, this lightning talk argues that participatory group observation circumvents the ‘single story’ pitfall, facilitating a more comprehensive understanding of individuals’ decisions to participate in a trade association.
Session Three - Creative Qualitative Approaches
Using Creative Research Methods to Elicit Working-Class Women's Experience of the Transition into Higher Education.
Alvarez Nee, Alison - London South Bank University
This lighting talk discusses how photo-elicitation and I-poems can be used to uncover meanings and emotions on issues relating to class and gender, highlight participant’s voice, and enhance researchers understanding of participant’s lived experience.
Whilst the influence of structural disadvantage on higher education experience is a well-documented topic, little research considers working-class women’s experience (Shields, 2021), where transition is described as a challenging period of identity negotiation (Christie et al., 2008).
I will outline a pilot study exploring the use of creative methods to elicit lived experience, applying a mixed-methods approach utilising photo-elicitation alongside I-poems to gain rich insights into lived experiences.
Photo-elicitation facilitates engagement with participants, prompting them to capture and discuss photographs (Harper, 2002), illustrating participants narratives. I-poems, a poetic representation of data constructed by isolating and reframing "I" statements from interview transcripts, highlight the authentic voice of participants, foregrounding their unique narratives (Gilligan, 2015). This method emphasises the political importance of ensuring participants voices remain at the centre, shifting the power dynamics in the research process (Edwards & Weller, 2012), towards a more equitable form of data analysis.
Findings suggest photo-elicitation empowers participants to take a more active role in the research process and encourages more self-awareness than words only interviews (Richard & Lahman, 2015), encouraging reflection, and revealing nuanced intersections of working-class identity, gender and a new academic environment (Richard & Lahman, 2015). I-poetry allowed the researcher to understand someone from a perspective moving beyond one’s own personal experience and theoretical perspective (Edwards, 2020).
Observations to Knowledge: Understanding the cultural significance of cannabidiol in the United Kingdom
Price, Joe - University of Lancaster
Background: The economic growth and consumption of cannabidiol (CBD) has increased exponentially in the UK. The rapid growth of the industry has caused confusion over the legal and regulatory status of the substance in the UK. This raises questions over the cultural understanding of CBD and cannabis. Previous research has showed a clear medicinal and pharmacological benefit for CBD but has lacked any understanding of the social and cultural aspects of consumption. By understanding the reasons, patterns, and barriers of consumption, this will produce a clear understanding about the environment and purpose of CBD consumption. Therefore, the research project is investigating the history and cultural significance of CBD and the demographics of consumption within the UK. Specifically, analysing the relationship between CBD, cannabis, health, and wellbeing cultures.
Methods: The project is analysing the potential connections between CBD culture and cannabis culture through interviews and ethnographic fieldwork of consumers of CBD, cannabis or both substances in addition to CBD shop owners and consumers. Participant observations in the CBD stores have evaluated the environment and the feelings that customers experience when purchasing the substance. The presentation will give the findings of the observations stage of the research project. In total 47 stores were visited 5 times each with a wide range of novel strategies being implemented to gain rich findings. The novel strategies will be discussed as part of the lightning talk to open up further talk about using observations in research and the best ways to understand different cultures.
Qualitative diaries and neurodiversity: Advancing accessible research methods for neurodivergent samples (and researchers)
Kirkwood, Mya - University of Liverpool
Neurodiversity refers to the naturally occurring variation in human cognitive functioning (Singer, 1999) and neurodivergent is an umbrella term referring to the possession of a neuro-developmental disorder; namely, autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, and dysgraphia (Doyle, 2020). With 15-20% of the population estimated to be neurodivergent and prevalence rates continuing to rise (London & Landes, 2021; McKechnie et al., 2023), the social science disciplines must navigate this changing landscape and develop neuro-inclusive research methods that align with the skills and difficulties of the (increasingly) neurodivergent populations we research.
Qualitative diaries are established as accessible research methods (Gibson et al., 2013), however they are yet to be utilised to study neurodivergent samples, despite aligning with the strengths and difficulties that characterise neurodivergent conditions. Consequently, I present the methodological contributions advanced by my novel qualitative diary study which explores daily experiences of inclusive leadership in neurodivergent working professionals. In this study, thirty-two neurodivergent participants submit a daily diary-entry via email or whatsapp (typed or audio-recorded).
This talk presents initial findings on the accessibility and suitability of qualitative diary methods when researching with neurodivergent populations – such as flexibility vs stability, and high participant engagement. Secondly, this talk presents initial reflections on utilising qualitative research diaries as a neurodivergent researcher, including benefits and challenges that this methodology can present for researchers’ own neurodivergent conditions, alongside the need for researcher reflexivity. Throughout, this talk presents transferrable insights for designing and conducting inclusive research that empowers the neurodivergent populations that we all (knowingly or unknowingly) sample!
Employing Participatory Artistic Methods to Explore Sense of Belonging Among Migrant Children in Urban Villages
Guo, Haoyue - University of Manchester
This lightning talk presents a novel methodological approach employed in the study of the sense of belonging and place attachment among rural-urban migrant children in the urban villages of Guangzhou. Participatory artistic practices serve as a primary research method, facilitating the children's expression and engagement with their shifting urban environments.
The study focuses on a group of 30 children aged 7–12, engaging them through a series of art-based activities designed to elicit their perceptions and connections to their immediate surroundings. These activities include mapping, collage painting, and architectural model-making, which not only allow the children to articulate their experiences but also provide a rich qualitative dataset. This method proves instrumental in transcending language barriers and capturing the nuanced experiences of these children, whose voices are often marginalised in urban planning discussions.
The presentation will discuss the setup of these artistic sessions, the challenges faced in encouraging genuine participation among young children, and the interpretive strategies employed to analyse the resulting artworks. Preliminary findings suggest that participatory art-making empowers the children, providing insights into their complex narratives of home, community, and identity within the rapidly urbanising spaces.
By integrating children’s creative outputs into academic research, this study demonstrates the potential of artistic methods to enhance understanding of urban transformation impacts on vulnerable populations. This approach not only enriches the academic discourse on migration and urban studies but also promotes a child-centric methodology in urban planning research.
Stream Two
Session 1 - Modelling Data
Effects of food bank usage on health and well being outcomes
Tanisha - Lancaster University
According to the Family Resources Survey 2022-23 statistics, the food banks users in the UK have increased to 3.3% from 3% in the previous year. Another concerning highlight is that the proportion of food-secure households dropped from 92% in 2019 to 2020, to 90% in 2022 to 2023. The use of food bank usage is associated with being food insecure and is highly stigmatized in the society. It not only puts the household, including children, in the desperate position of hunger and malnutrition but also impacts the health and well-being of the household members. Using Family Resources Survey - 2021 to 2022, I am estimating the effects of food bank usage on the four wellbeing outcomes- life satisfaction, anxiety, life worthwhile and happiness. There is a high proportion of food bank users who are females, renters, disable, singles without children, low-income earners, benefits recipients, unemployed, food-insecure and in bad to very bad health in general. Using OLS and controlling for all these characteristics, I find that food bank usage is negatively correlated with life satisfaction, happiness, and life worthwhile (-0.249*** to -0.418***) and positively associated with anxiety (0.359***). To evaluate the causal effects, my potential identification strategy is to exploit the rise in energy and gas prices following the declaration of Russia-Ukraine war in late February 2022. The econometric method to implement this strategy would be difference-in-differences. The idea is due to be executed after the release of FRS 2022-2023 in April 2024.
Leaders’ Narcissism, Leisure, and Team Autonomy: The Dual Effect of Leader Proactivity on Team Well-Being through Team Proactive Motivational Pathways
Sakitri, Galih - University of Manchester
Proactivity may have a potential dark side that causes unfavourable consequences, especially when executed unwisely. Drawing on the integration of the wise proactivity concept, enrichment theory, and conservation of resources theory, this study aims to investigate why and when entrepreneurial leader proactivity is detrimental or beneficial for team outcomes and the dichotomy of its execution. This study focuses on understanding two components of the wise proactivity concept, task-strategic and self-regulation aspects, that play essential roles in this relationship and examines its potential association with entrepreneurial leader dark traits, including narcissism. A quantitative study has been conducted by investigating 165 small business ventures using longitudinal and multi-source approaches. The scope of this study encompassed emerging entrepreneurs from diverse sectors, including food-beverages, fashion, and technology-driven start-ups. The questionnaires were administered using Qualtrics to leaders and team members at three different time points at one-month intervals. This study applies MPLUS to employ Structural Equation Modelling to examine the constructed hypotheses. The finding shows that when proactive leaders are actively engaged in leisure activities, it can reduce the negative impact of their proactive personality on team extrinsic motivation. This study indicates that the joining effect of leader proactivity and team autonomy can reduce the stress experienced by team members. Meanwhile, leaders’ narcissism was found to negatively moderate the relationship between leaders’ proactivity and team engagement through team intrinsic motivation and happiness. Ultimately, this study contributes to the realm of wise proactivity concept by emphasising team-level study in depicting the double-edged sword of leader proactivity.
How Do International Institutions Affect Our Analysis of Childcare Time-Use Data!? The ILO
Olsen, Wendy - University of Manchester
ILO concepts help ordinary statistical enquiries. The gendered division of labour in India, as in OECD, affects how childcare is carried out. There is a ‘double burden’ on many women. Many new technical jobs have gone to men.
We aimed to find out which social groups do more childcare, measured in terms of time spent. We used the Indian Time Use Survey 2019. The ILO advises how each country can put Time-Use in its Labour Force Survey modules. We recommend using Time-Use data.
There are large amounts of invisibilised domestic unpaid work. Women do three daily hours of childcare in an average household. This includes two hours of cooking time. The treatment of unpaid work is delicate and is sensitive politically. Once summed up, the unpaid times are enormous.
In regression stages, a Tobit regression can be used, disallowing negative ‘minutes’ in the result. We added groups' gender norms to the mix of variables. This improved the regression fit. Narratives about unpaid domestic care work can contribute to re-visibilising this important set of services.
What is potential outcome framework?
Zhang, Shunqi - University of Manchester
The Potential Outcomes Framework is a widely used framework for causal inference in the social sciences. This lightning talk is to introduce the framework’s key elements. First, it is important to identify the difference between association and causation from a statistical perspective. Secondly, I will introduce the definition of potential outcomes using an example from everyday life. Finally, I will explain how to estimate the causal effect in the given example under the potential outcomes framework. In the end, the audience will understand the necessity and importance of using the potential outcomes framework to establish causal relationships in different social science settings.
Local Governments’ Efficiency in Indonesia: Evidence from Stochastic Frontier Analysis
Winasis, Arfan - University of Manchester
Public services are vital to people's well-being, economic recovery, and development. In recent decades, government expenditures for vital public services have been distributed to local governments to improve their efficacy for development. Studies suggest that fiscal decentralisation may positively impact economic development.
This study seeks to investigate the provision of essential public services in Indonesia. Its further objective is to examine the efficiency of government expenditures to attain the desired outcome in terms of human capital. Furthermore, this study explores whether public spending in Indonesia efficiently achieves the development goals, i.e., higher economic growth and increased welfare.
The study will employ panel data on government expenditures and their related outcomes, i.e., life expectancy and years of education. The panel data will comprise 428 municipalities across Indonesia from 2010 to 2019, which represent all regions, namely Sumatra, Java, Bali and Nusa Tenggara, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Maluku, and Papua, with diverse geographic, demographic, and economic conditions.
The study applies Stochastic Frontier Analysis (SFA) to evaluate the efficiency of government expenditure. The SFA has been utilised as one of the prominent methods to measure the efficiency of the public sector. The outputs—life expectancy and years of education—should increase due to better public health care and education services. Some control variables that potentially influence efficiency are also considered, such as population density, which indicates the city’s level of economy and the city’s geographic circumstances. The results suggest that more efficient public expenditures may promote better health and education outcomes.
Session 2 - Secondary Sources and Datasets
The role of government policies in the digital transformation of manufacturing SMEs: A regional level study of China
Zhang, Wanyu - University of Manchester
Digital transformation is crucial for gaining a competitive advantage across industries and firms. Small and medium-sized companies (SMEs) play an important role in any national economy. However, due to their resource limitations, SMEs generally face more difficulties than large corporations and often struggle to achieve digital transformation independently. This article fills a gap in existing literature, which focuses on more internal factors of enterprises while neglecting external forces. This study examines the impact of external factors, especially the government on digital transformation in the context of Chinese manufacturing SMEs, focusing on companies in three areas including Guangdong, Liaoning and Hebei provinces. We use the triangulation method to collect data from multiple resources, including semi-structured interviews with 37 respondents from owners and top managers with manufacturing SMEs, and 18 external experts and researchers. Beyond empirical data, we also collect and evaluate 352 government policies and reports, taking special attention to the policy mix approach. While the Chinese government has implemented numerous policies to support digital transformation in manufacturing SMEs, a gap persists in meeting organizational needs. We explore the reasons for regional disparities in the development of manufacturing SMEs and policy differences, emphasizing the role of political ties and capabilities of local policymakers in supporting digital transformation of SMEs. This research helps SME managers to identify external factors that support their digital transformation, as well as having important implications for policymakers in supporting the successful digital transformation of SMEs.
Utilising newspaper data for health and social science research: reflections on a study about gender and suicide
Ramesh, Paro - University of Manchester
Studies from around the world have identified that newspapers emphasise unusual methods of suicide for men, while for women, more attention is paid to acts of suicide that are not conducted alone (filicide-suicide, suicide pacts, etc). Previous research indicates that this may be attributable to sociocultural assumptions of acceptable gender behaviour - males are depicted as aggressive and independent, whereas females are portrayed as dependent and submissive. This study will build on the existing literature by comparing gender differences in sociodemographic profiles (age, marital status) and method of suicide reported in Indian newspapers.
The website Pressreader, which collates digitised newspapers from across the world, was used to identify English-language newspapers in India for articles that covered suicides. Articles were identified by searching for keywords related to suicide, such as "suicide," "killed herself/himself," etc. Articles published between 18th May 2021 and 17th May 2022 were included.
This talk will explore the effectiveness of conducting research with online newspapers, particularly in the context of low-resource settings where official data may not be available or accurate. Particular focus will be paid to the website Pressreader and other online newspaper websites, discussing the advantages and disadvantages of using these sources for healthcare research. This talk will also discuss how data gathered from these newspapers were analysed, using Excel for quantitative data and NVivo for qualitative analysis.
How institutions work: conversation analysis as a method for analysing how institutions communicate
Butler, Matthew - University of York
This talk discusses how conversation analysis (CA) can be used as an interdisciplinary approach to studying workplaces. Talking with colleagues, customers or service users is essential in how organisations work. The talk demonstrates how these interactions are rich forms of data which can be analysed with a rigorous and multifaceted approach developed over the last fifty years. Using a case study from a news interview, I demonstrate how CA can be used to unpack the nuances of a news interviewer's question. I demonstrate that the detail which can be explicated from close analysis holds immeasurable value for our understanding of different institutional settings. Further, I demonstrate how these findings can also be transferred to have practical implications that can be applied to other settings such as education and medicine.
Handling stakeholders’ Cognitive and Metacognitive Interaction Behaviour in Social Media as a Novel Unstructured Data Source: Contribution of Machine Learning
Molavi, Homa - University of Manchester
This research explores the evolving dynamics of stakeholder interactions in the context of higher education institutions (HEIs), particularly in the face of transformative changes triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The strategies of response to emergencies and crises shape the international reputation of HEIs. Crisis and its consequences can be managed through communication and controlled by data analytics. It delves into the shift from traditional university governance structures to stakeholder-driven models and emphasizes the critical role of crisis management. The focus then turns to the inadequacy of educational institutions in adapting to 21st-century learning, exacerbated by the governance challenges posed by the pandemic. The overarching research question guides the exploration of how organizations can leverage digital technology, particularly ML, to shape positive stakeholder interactions. The literature review examines the transformation of stakeholder interactions, unveiling the role of both cognition and metacognition in shaping perceptions and behaviours presenting a novel data source for understanding organizational dynamics. The study proposes that stakeholders with advanced metacognitive abilities exhibit intelligent behaviour instead of actual behaviour, impacting corporate reputation perception. The research methodology outlines the challenges of handling vast, unstructured datasets and employs a multi-layer stacking ensemble technique, combining various base models, to predict stakeholders’ sentiments and behaviours. The study contributes to the understanding of the complex interplay between organizations and stakeholders in the digital age, offering insights into leveraging technological advancements for positive stakeholders’ interactions.
Session Three - Digital Methods
A new-age solution - use of 3D Social Virtual Reality (SVR) platforms in research
Kinakh, Vitalia - University of Manchester
I was involved in an exciting and unique research project as a research methodologist. Here is the link to the published article https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-46494-1
I'll introduce this mixed-methods research, but the focus of my lighting talk will be on how Social Virtual Reality (SVR) platforms offers opportunities for researchers to explore human behaviour and interactions in a 3D immersive digital environment.
SVR platforms offer a unique opportunity to reach diverse populations regardless of geographical location (as long as individuals have VR headsets).
SVR opens up avenues for innovative research methodologies, such as avatar embodiment studies or virtual role-playing scenarios. These methodologies can deepen our understanding of human behaviour and cognition in ways that traditional research methods cannot.
A Fair Framework for Responsibility and Accountability in Data-Driven and AI Systems
Ng, Shi Yun - Manchester Metropolitan University
As the use of technology and artificial intelligence (AI) becomes the norm in our everyday lives, accountability in the field of AI has become a major concern. When AI systems take actions or make decisions, the question raises as to who should be held accountable for the results produced by AI systems. One of the challenges arises from the complexity of AI systems acting as black boxes, often in resulting in difficulty understanding the decision made by the AI. Small and medium-sized companies face limited resources, which makes defining responsibilities or recruiting experts a challenge, as well as a challenge in mobilizing the employee knowledge to quickly respond to unintended consequences. These limitations and inadequate accountability make risk reduction and redress for victims difficult. As the rapid development of AI technology further increases the challenge, legal and ethical frameworks are struggling to keep pace with innovation, and the lack of standardization of existing policies requires collaboration with diverse stakeholders to comprehensively assess accountability in AI. Therefore, the aim of this study is to design an accountability framework that allows businesses to identify, assign responsibility and accountability in data-driven and AI systems. Certain work will be carried out such as designing questionnaires to capture each individual’s perspective, as well as co-designing and co-producing with people from transdisciplinary fields to ensure that the proposed framework can capture the real-life scenarios.
Online Mental Health Communities and Self-Harm: Examining Self-Harm in Online Borderline Personality Disorder Communities Using a Computational Linguistic
Entwistle, Charlotte - Lancaster University
This abstract introduces the sophisticated, computational methods that I currently employ in my research. At present, my research comprises a comprehensive investigation into the complex phenomenon of self-harm – encompassing suicidality and deliberate self-harm (DSH) – through analysing large-scale online borderline personality disorder (BPD) discussion platforms (i.e., BPD Reddit communities).
In our first study on this topic, we carried out a large-scale, naturalistic study, in which we leveraged modern language analysis methods to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the nature of suicidality and DSH in the context of BPD. To do this, we utilised natural language processing techniques to analyse Reddit data (i.e., BPD forum posts) of 992 users with self-identified BPD (combined N posts = 66,786). Overall, our findings generated further insight into the psychosocial dynamics of suicidality and DSH, while also uncovering meaningful interactions between the online BPD community and these behaviours.
Our current, in-progress study, again leveraging data from Reddit's BPD subreddits (N posts = 73,941; N unique users = 992), investigates the interplay between online BPD community dynamics and their interactions with self-harm disclosures and psychosocial outcomes (e.g., affective health; social health) for individuals with BPD disclosing self-harm on the platform. A comprehensive methodological approach is to be adopted, incorporating computational linguistic analysis and theory-driven manual coding.
This research integrates modern computational analyses with psychological theory to understand self-harm in BPD communities, demonstrating how advanced digital methods can be applied to understand clinical, psychological, and social phenomenon in today’s digital world, via more efficient and naturalistic means.
How to approach political and social in-game identities of players without direct discussions of the concepts with respondent
Slavgorodskii-Kazanets, Timur - University of Salford
I would like to talk about the part of my research that appears to be a development of virtual ethnography for the purpose of researching of virtual identity of players.
Traditionally, exploration of how ludonarrative identity functions relies on the coherent set of experiences of the player, and it is relevant when the player is actively role-playing the game. In the case of my study, I have faced a challenge, because I am exploring virtual identity that emerges without the element of roleplaying in online video games. In this case, direct questions about narrative-driven identity formations can be perceived by respondents negatively (as they are not role-playing, and relate to the game purely to the separate Virtual World). I would like to tell more about how this challenge can be approached by combining structural narrative analysis and position-oriented discourse analysis in the research.
Structural narrative analysis is used to turn the narrative players interact with into identification spaces that can later become a basis for position-oriented discourse analysis. The guide which includes semi-structured questions, relies on these identification spaces as well. During the position-oriented discourse analysis, the researcher can interpret the virtual identities of players through their positioning regarding identification spaces without asking them directly what they think about narrative-driven identity formations. It is useful when we want to understand, for example, how nationalist identity formation contributes to the virtual identity without asking the respondent directly about this political concept or its elements.