Integration And Interaction

Since the 20th century, the innovation of information and communication technologies (ICTs) has demonstrated a tremendous impulse to the advancement of social research methods. With the rising of Internet as a new technology, its impacts on social research methods have gained a great attention from social researchers. Previous researches on Internet and social research methods mainly focused on the adaptation of traditional social research methods to the Internet, while the potential of Internet in developing innovative social research methods still remain to be exploited. Therefore, this research aimed to explore the potential of Internet in the advancement and innovation of social research methods, and to further exploit the value of Internet as a research tool.For the purpose of this research, this dissertation investigated three issues by using a variety of research methods. Firstly, by a documentary study on the social research methodology, it analyzed the deficiencies of traditional social research methods and their applications. Secondly, by another documentary study on the properties of the Internet and a series of in-depth interviews with several specialists and practitioners in Internet-based research methods, it investigated the potential contribution of Internet to the development of social research methods. Finally, by a quasi-experiment, combined with some in-depth interviews with Internet users and a large-scale online survey, it studied the feasibility of the new Internet-based research methods proposed in this paper.Based on the discussions of these three issues above, this dissertation provided some innovative opinions and came to conclusions as follows:First, different from other research tools, Internet has the special potential to develop"integrated"and"interactive"research mode. Unlike those researches focusing on the adaptation of traditional research methods to the Internet, this research proposed a new Internet-based research mode based on the characters of Internet as a research tool and the theories of social research methods. This research mode permits researchers to integrate the scientific research process and social practice process, to link the theory construction and theory validation, and to create a dynamic relationship between researchers and participants. In this way, this research went beyond the adaptation of traditional research methods and provided some clues for future research to further exploit the potential of Internet as a research tool.Second, from the perspective of research methodology, Internet may contribute to the development of practice-oriented social research methodology. Through the investigation of the core of positive philosophy and the analysis of the deficiencies of traditional social research methods, this research improved the scientific model of Wallace and argued that practice-oriented research methodology represents the future trend of social research methodology. It has the potential to solve the two main problems existing in traditional social research methodologies: the separation of theoretical research and empirical research, and that of theory construction and theory validation. Meanwhile, this research analyzed the dual properties of Internet as both a research tool and a research object and argued that Internet can be one of the feasible ways to impel the development of the practice-oriented social research. Hereby, this research indicated the value of Internet to social research methods in terms of research methodology rather that specific research methods.Third, the tradeoff of costs and rewards has significant effects on the willingness of Internet users'participation in Internet-based surveys. The quasi-experiment in this research proved that Internet-based practice-oriented research methods are feasible and that the tradeoff of costs and rewards is an important factor that may influence the Internet users'willingness of participation in Internet surveys. Furthermore, this research constructed some scales for the measurement of costs and rewards in Internet surveys, which laid a good foundation for future research on respondent factors in social surveys.