Book Review Social Science Computer Review

Volume 27 Number 2
May 2009 284-287
# 2009 SAGE Publications
Fielding, N., Lee, R. M., & Blank, G. (Eds.) (2008) 10.1177/0894439308327096
The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods. http://ssc.sagepub.com
hosted at
London: SAGE Publications, Ltd. (592 pp., $140.00 hardback). http://online.sagepub.com

DOI: 10.1177/0894439308327096

The rise of online research in the social sciences is not surprising, given the
proliferation of the personal computer and the availability of secondary data on Inter-
net. The SAGE Handbook of Online Research Methods provides a contemporary review
of the realm of online research, with an emphasis on methods intrinsic to the social
sciences. The book consists of 7 sections that detail a wide range of considerations and
methods for engaging in online research. The book’s sections are divided into 29 total
chapters dedicated to the emergence of Internet research, Internet research design, data
capture procedures, survey methods and design, ethnographic research, data archiv-
ing, and conclude with discussions on the future of online social science research.
A recurrent theme that resurfaces across the chapters is that researchers must be vig-
ilant to ameliorate ethics concerns. The dramatic rise in the use of the Internet as a
research medium has opened a quandary of issues such as subject confidentiality, intel-
lectual property, and legal liability that are perhaps not immediately apparent to new
entrants to online research. Although the editors allude to the fact that the Internet-
based research has become popular because of the reduced cost of conducting research,
the collective works rightly remind the reader that online research requires as much
foresight and rigorous research design consideration as more traditional means of data
collection.
The editors of this handbook begin with a brief introduction to the growth of online
research. Of particular note is the discussion of the phenomenon of the ‘‘lay
researcher,’’ the growth of research by ‘‘ordinary citizens’’ (p. 4). The authors lament
the targeting of content that has driven these ordinary users to seek out information
that dispenses with the prohibitively technical discourse targeted at professionals. In
addition, the rise of online media has helped decentralize the avenues of information
dissemination from traditional broadcast and print news media to a myriad of web
pages and blogs. It is with an eye toward the criticisms of such types of knowledge that
the book seeks to help researchers identify data collection procedures and analytic
methods that avoid the pitfalls that would ultimately undermine the validity of online
academic research.
The section on Internet research design begins with a discussion of ethics. Particu-
larly at issue are the contextual issues of online research and ensuring the confidenti-
ality of research subjects. The authors note that the march of technology has outpaced
corresponding advances in ethics in research. In addition, online research can trans-
cend political boundaries, making it difficult to establish a strategy to protect the
research subjects. Charlesworth’s chapter (chap. 3) continues the previous chapter’s
theme of ethical considerations, but expands it to include legal issues under the guise
of intellectual property, copyright, and data protection. The chapter uses the U.K.’s
Data Protection Act of 1998 as the primary legal framework, but the authors’ illustra-
tive examples are easily transferable to the U.S. and EU countries. Hewson and
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 Book Review 285

Laurent detail design issues for the Internet-mediated research (IMR), particularly
how researcher vigilance to design consideration can suffer in an environment where
data collection is quick and inexpensive (p. 59). There is an analysis of research tool
design, survey control, sampling procedures, and implementation. The authors also
note bibliographic issues for researchers, such as source verification and authentication.
Rasmussen’s discussion of data quality concludes the section, detailing types of data
collection errors and threats to validity. In addition to addressing procedural issues with
primary data collection, the authors remind us of the availability of secondary data from
a diverse array of sources such as blogs, emails, web surveys, and weblogs.
Section 3 comprises the techniques of data capture, beginning with an analysis of
middleware and the challenges of ‘‘integrating heterogeneous, autonomous distributed
datasets’’ (p. 100). The chapter focusing on dataset integration might be useful for
researchers with a need for greater emphasis on the technical realm of the Grid-
enabled data resources, but for researchers who primarily use unitary datasets it might
not be of much use. Chapter 7 contains an expansive section on translating data into
datasets, but the discussion of Structured Query Language operations to derive data
from Usenet newsgroups seems very dated, considering a large number of Internet ser-
vice providers have already discontinued providing Usenet services. Organizational
and network theorists who might be interested in structural interaction issues might
be interested in Hogan’s chapter on social network analysis (p. 141). The author details
the types of network typologies and helps identify sources of social network data as
well as helps identify traditional indicators of interest, such as centrality and subgroup
detection. A useful review of software packages used for social network analysis helps
conclude the chapter nicely. The section itself concludes with an analysis of ‘‘nonreac-
tive’’ data collection. This methodology deals with indirect and nonintrusive means
with which to collect data, which in the context of this work mostly takes the form
of log files, but also ‘‘cookies’’ that are already in widespread use in e-commerce. The
chapter does seem to be missing a discussion on the ethical considerations of nonreac-
tive forms of data collection, particularly the question of informed consent of data
subjects.
Section 4 delves into perhaps the most familiar area to social science researchers, the
survey. Vehovar and Manfreda begin with an overview of online surveying, with a
focus on methodological issues and also problems with survey administration. Those
researchers who are interested in the mixed-methods research will find a mention of
it here, as well as a more detailed review of qualitative methods in later chapters. The
proliferation of the one-stop survey solutions such as Survey Monkey and Zoomerang
has no doubt aided the dissemination of online surveys, but this section provides a
more fundamental review of sampling issues. Chapter 11 provides a useful review of
traditional sampling methodology as well as tips for incentivizing participation in the
Internet-based surveys. A review of the types of incentives given to online survey
respondents would be helpful, as the process and implications of incentives in online
research are not well defined. Ending with a review of survey layout design, the section
provides an excellent review of the considerations of online survey research that should
provide guidance to those seeking assistance both structure and form considerations
on online surveys.

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286 Social Science Computer Review

Qualitative researchers should be encouraged by the degree of possibilities advanced

by the authors of the section on virtual ethnography. Ethnographic research is gener-
ally dependent on methods that involve heavy commitments of researcher time, such as
participant observation. The researcher can save significant time and travel costs by
using the Internet-based interviewing procedures as listed in chapter 15, particularly
using e-mail, discussion boards, and chat rooms. An unfortunate theme across several
of the chapters seem to be its reliance on literature that nearly a decade or older.
Although in some pieces referencing such works might be useful in showing the pro-
gression of early virtual ethnographic research to its current state, some of the asser-
tions made could be better substantiated in the course of more recent literature
(particularly in the interviewing and focus group chapters), particularly in reference
to more recent technological developments. Section 5 continues with a review of the
rise of blogging and its emergence as a research medium. Of note are the discussion
on the self-reflexivity and the hazards of the blogging medium. The work, along with
the subsequent introduction to multiuser environments and distributed video analysis,
provides a review of the more emergent forms of online ethnographic research.
Although given brief mention in the focus group chapter, commercial products such
as Second Life might provide interesting avenues of opportunity to ethnographic
research in multiuser environments, particularly at much lower cost than providing vir-
tual reality research environments.
The sixth section details the ever expanding use of the Internet as an archival
resource. In the United States, the rise of data outlets such as the Inter-University Con-
sortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) and the Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research have helped fuel the need for high-quality, downloadable secondary
quantitative data. The section details resources like these as well as resources such as
Economic and Social Data Service (ESDS) in the United Kingdom. The review of sec-
ondary quantitative data is followed by a chapter discussing secondary qualitative
data. Of particular note to social researchers with interests in spatial distributions of
phenomena, there is a chapter detailing geographic and spatial data resources.
Included is a review of mapping concepts geared toward the novice social science
researcher who could perhaps benefit from adding spatial concepts to their research.
The section concludes with a rather well-illustrated chapter on data mining procedures
and an interesting contemplation of the role of artificial intelligence. Some faculty
members might be surprised to hear that the use of software to automatically code and
grade student essays is already being used extensively, most notably with the Scholastic
Aptitude Test (SAT; p. 458)
The final section deals with the future of online research, with a majority of the lit-
erature detailing how current capabilities can be accentuated by increases in computa-
tional power. The use of Grid computing, the expansion of the role of GIS, data
storage, and archiving are all areas covered in this final section. The highly technical
discourse of the remaining chapters will satisfy the technophiles in the crowd but per-
haps at the cost of providing useful insight to the average reader who may purchase the
work.
As a whole, the work does an adequate job as a comprehensive review of online
research methods. The only criticisms are that a select few of the works appear a little

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 Book Review 287

dated in their content and references and that some of the works engage in prohibi-
tively technical discourse (for a handbook publication format) and should perhaps opt
for a bit more generalist approach to presenting such topics. There is no need to fear a
geographic divide in the relevance of discourse, the bulk of the works includes content
and illustrations that are easily relevant across political boundaries, much like the
nature of online research itself. The book provides a useful introduction to online
research methods, not only to those who are new to the social science research but also
to current researchers and practitioners who are interested in expanding their metho-
dological proficiency.

Stephen Kleinschmit
North Carolina State University, Raleigh, North Carolina

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