Health Research in Cyberspace: Methodological, Practical and Personal Issues

Chen and colleagues (2004: 157) contend, online technologies provide "researchers with an array of alternative arenas for data collection". As we shall see in this volume, there are numerous ways for social researchers to undertake their research. In many ways, online research provides researchers with numerous attractive environments that offline research may not be able to do. But we shall see too that online researchers have come to realise that many issues that we have adopted for offline research can be problematic when we attempt to do the same for online research and this includes the methods of data collection and ethics. Online research can also be problematic and there are important issues which researchers need to think through and deal with. I have attempted to cover these issues in the chapters in this volume. Essentially, contributors discuss more or less along the methodological, practical and personal issues in doing their online research. Some chapters may lean towards a more formal type of writing and are more theoretical while others may be more subjective and practical. But this is the intention of this book, as reflected in its title.