This paper is aimed to
analyze the research method, strengths and weaknesses of the selected research
journal. Through this paper, I shall divide into two parts. The first part
is about the brief summary of the research and the second part is my analysis
which covers the above mentioned aspects.
I. Brief summary of the research
The purpose of the research is to make survey study to investigate the privacy and security concerns of IT users. Followings are IT-users‘ major concerns included in this study; privacy, security and threats, impersonation and forged identity, children protection, e-mail safety, and censorship.
The research organization begins with the
purpose of study, introduction of why this research topic is worth to study,
and background knowledge including definition of words using in his study,
many examples and quotes from various books or journals to illustrate the
importance of his issue, and related law and regulation about the privacy
and security of online IT users. Next, the author presented the method
of study such as how he developed the survey questionnaire, who is the
target group of the survey and the range of scale in questionnaire from
“strongly agree to strongly disagree”. Consequently, he showed the survey
result by both describing and presenting in table format. Finally, he made
discussion and conclusion supported by the statistic of survey result,
leading to the end result that his hypothesis is correct. That means the
IT-users‘ major concerns (in the descending of importance) are; privacy,
security and threats, impersonation and forged identity, children protection,
e-mail safety, and censorship.
II. Analysis of the research
The author used the survey method to prove his hypothesis. He summarized the data and explained it in relation to his expectation. In my opinion, this research paper has many outstanding points and some drawbacks on the other hand. Regarding its admirable side, the paper is well organized by having the logical order of sequential elements such as introduction, method of survey, result and conclusion. In addition, it is understandable and easy to follow for those who are “computer people” and even who are not. The author provided the clear definition of significant words in the research. He gave not only the explanation of each concern toward the privacy and security of online IT users, but also the useful examples which help reader to better understand or see how these concerns effect the real world of business. Finally, the author provided example of the questionnaire used in this survey in the appendix of paper, thus the reader can determine quality of questions; such as clear and concise question, how they related to the survey conclusion, and if the questions can mislead the people surveyed to answer what the author wanted them to.
Though the paper has a number of strengths, it fails to explain some critical parts, leading to doubt in validity of the conclusion. Firstly, in the “Method of study” part, the author assumed that the people surveyed, who did not answer the questionnaire, had the same characteristic as those who answered. His judgement was based on the demographics of people answered. In scientific methodology, one cannot or at least should not assume something without any evidence to prove it. Likewise, the author had better mention only about how many people who did not answer and leave this group alone without making any further assumption, as he had no information about these people at all. Secondly, in the “Survey result” part, the author set scale of opinion from 1 to 5 (“Strongly agree”=1, “Agree”= 2, “Neutral”= 3, “Disagree” =4 and “Strongly disagree”=5). Then he divided into two groups; “Agree groups” included “Strongly agree”, and “Agree” opinions while “Disagree group” included ““Neutral”, “Disagree” and “Strongly disagree” opinions. After reviewing the survey result, I notice that many people answered in “Neutral” category in many questions. Hence, “Neutral” group can dominate the “Disagree group” and consequently distort the survey result interpretation. Thirdly, the “Table 1 Ranked concern” showed how participation rank six concerns in order of importance. Apparently, there are six concerns mentioned in this paper which are 1) privacy, 2) security and threats, 3) children protection, 4) e-mail safety and 5) impersonation, forged identity and 6) censorship. However, in table 1, the first category of table “Privacy concern” had the rank from 1 to 5 while other varies from 1 to 6 without any remark or explanation of why the first concern had only 5 ranks. At last, based on the author’s analysis of survey result, he tended to draw the statistical result to his predetermined assumption or conclusion and overlook the possibility that the statistical result can have other different meanings or can be interpreted in another way which can weaken his conclusion.
In short, this research paper gives reader
useful information about how the privacy and security concerns of IT users
effect the on-line shopping and the use of e-mail. The author kept the
format and wording simple so that the paper is easily understandable. Despite
its well-presented point, it can bring the reader about confusion and doubt
of the survey interpretation and the way the author draw conclusion. The
author can solve these issues by concentrating not only positive but also
negative data or fact, and providing more detail of illustrated table to
make it clear to reader.