Consideraciones generales sobre la participación de la sociedad civil en el

According to Dishion and Granic (2004: 143), direct observation is considered one of the most effective ways of collecting ecologically valid data on behaviour. On the contrary, with participant observation, the “direct observer” does not try to become part of the phenomena being observed. Instead, the researcher aims at reducing the degree of invasiveness “so as not to bias the observations” (Trochim 2001: 161). However, this does not mean that direct observation method is entirely bias-free. In order these biases to be covered to a certain extent, the researcher is advised to take some notes during the process and video recording if possible.

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5.3 Research Approach

Research approach refers to the way the study is going to be addressed. The research approach may be quantitative or qualitative, deductive or inductive.

5.3.1 Deductive Vs Inductive Approach: Zikmund (2000) identifies the inductive research as “the logical process of establishing a general proposition on the basis of observation of particular facts”. According to Saunders et al (2000), in the inductive approach, data is collected and then theory is developed based on the data findings. On the other hand, the deductive research approach is defined as “the logic process of deriving a conclusion from a known premise or something known to be true” (Zikmund, 2000).

5.3.2 Qualitative Vs Quantitative Approach: Guba and Lincoln (2005) report two methods available to researchers: qualitative and quantitative. It is important that a qualitative approach provides deeper understanding of the phenomenon within its context. Silverman (2001), states that “the strength of a qualitative research is that it focuses on actual practice and looks at how social interactions are performed”. Travers (2001) identifies five qualitative research methods: observation, interviewing, ethnographic fieldwork, discourse analysis and textual analysis. In contrast to qualitative research, quantitative research tends to be more structured and formalized. In quantitative research, results are presented into numbers and figures. The primary objective of this research is to identify the factors that influence online decision making process when Cypriots come to book online. As a result, both qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in order to extract more valid results.

There were three major requirements when selecting the most suitable research approach for the purpose of this research. Firstly, due to the exploratory and the correlational nature of the thesis, respondents should report their own previous experiences with online booking, purchasing, banking, etc. Secondly the thesis focuses specifically on exploring what actually happens in practice during the online booking process, rather than on simply reporting what participants thought they are going to do in practice. Thirdly, in eliciting the respondents’ replies to their previous and presents experiences it is important to recognize that it might be difficult for them to express and explain the tacit aspects of their knowledge and interpretation of their actions and

63 responses (Sternberg et al, 2000). As a result, it is important to use a research method that has the ability to prompt and assist recall of the underlying tacit knowledge and previous experiences.

5.3.3Positivism: According to the philosopher Auguste Comte (1978-1857) who was the inspirator of the positivism, true knowledge is based on the experience of the senses and can be obtained by observation and experiment (Cohen et al 2003; Ssemaluulu, 2012). Positivist studies generally attempt to explain and predict what happens in the social world by searching for regulatories and casual relationships between its constituent elements (Ssemaluulu, 2012; Iivari and Venable 2009). However, positivism was criticized due to its lack of regard for the subjective states of individuals (Ssemaluulu, 2012; Dash, 2005). Dash (2005) reports that this theory regards human behaviour as passive, controlled and determined by external environment. However, this research proposal analyses human online behaviour using the eye tracking device, leaving the participants freely to explore and search the hotel websites and having the opportunity to make their decisions naturally without any driven directions.

5.3.4 Intepretivism (or anti-positivism): According to Livesey (2006) interpretivist methodology supports towards the collection of qualitative data and uses methods such as unstructured interviews and participant observation that provides this type of data. Interpretivists analyse how humans take activities and how this can be achieved through methods other than those employed by the positivist approach (Fitzpatrick, 2012). According to Goldkuhl (2012), the core idea of interpretivism is to work with these subjective meanings already there in the social world (i.e. to acknowledge their existence, to reconstruct them, to understand them, to avoid distorting them, to use them as building blocks in theorizing). In this study the CCIRs are these subjective meanings.

5.3.5Design Science: Hevner et al. (2004) have presented a set of guidelines for design science research within the discipline of Information Systems. They argue that the design science seeks to create “what is effective”. According to the researchers design science research requires the creation of an innovative, purposeful artifact (i.e. according to March and Smith (1995), constructs or concepts: they constitute a conceptualization used to describe problems within the domain and to specify their solutions, instantiation is the realization of an artifact in its environment. IT research instantiates both specific information systems and tools that address various aspects of

64 designing information systems) for a special problem domain. The artefacts can be constructs, models, methods, and instantiations. The artifact must be evaluated in order to ensure its utility (via eye tracking device) for the specified problem. In order to form a novel research contribution, the artifact must either solve a problem that has not yet been solved, or provide a more effective solution. For this purpose as referred above a proposal for website re-designing is presented in the validation chapter nine.