Investigating Jewish App Development
Project Overview
As a part of the LINKS iCore team of researchers at the University of Haifa, I participated in a research group functions that analyzed ways that clearly defined (primordial) communities (re)form social boundaries through the use of new media (i.e. the Internet, mobile communication) and knowledge that is constructed online. This project focused on achieving a better understanding of Jewish (sometimes religious) App developers.
We investigated the social facets and consequences of facilitating engagement with new media activities. These apps usually sought to leverage 21st-century tools to facilitate religious observance and traditions. This research seeks to explore the changing Jewish practices of learning, ritual and such. I have included some screenshots from the mixed-method dataset that we created.
Descriptive statistics of the Dataset
Demographic Descriptors
Within the dedoose framework, I created a scheme (using binary and categorical variables) to outline the demographic statistics of the interview subjects. Once I began the coding process I realized that I needed to expand the scheme to enable accounting for multiple interview subjects. The below screenshot review the final results of the scheme.
Demographic Statistics of Subjects
Coding Scheme
Within the dedoose framework, I created a scheme (using binary and categorical variables) to outline the demographic statistics of the interview subjects. Once I began the coding process I realized that I needed to expand the scheme to enable accounting for multiple interview subjects. The below screenshot review the final results of the scheme.
I used an approach based on Asher Shkedi’s Mixed-Method Grounded theory of qualitative research to build my coding scheme. After creating an initial 3 level scheme sorted by category I used it to code interviews, building it out further when I encountered new instances of codes in the data. An outline of the finished coding scheme will be available upon publication of the work and an update will be posted here with a link.