Final Project Progress Report 2

For this week’s final project progress, I mainly focused on creating a Google Sheets and starting to categorize and interpret answers given by participants who contributed in related discussions in order to keep track of my observations on Zhihu. I have to say, after a preliminary observation, I am really inspired by those answers even though I am already familiar with this territory to a certain extent. What I am about to do for next steps would probably be as described as follows: Continue to observe relevant discussions online and work on the Google Sheets by synthesizing all the answers relating to the research question; Find and read related academic articles as well as less formal articles such as Newspaper reports or personal blogs based on the Google Sheets blueprint to broaden my understanding; Systematically incorporate critical theories and explanations extracted from insightful articles to discuss the matter in depth; Come up with possible suggestions or solutions for improving the current situation or for future research.         

URL of the Google Sheets mentioned in the last paragraph: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1JtlBTyDkyPWO1xfK61BZLPZbL274VBxXJps_ThxXOjg/edit#gid=0

Questions:
About Anonymity: What is exactly the definition of keeping the anonymity of the participants? Does it mean I cannot mention any participant’s username even though a majority of them don’t use their real names in such public discussion forums? If so, how should I directly or indirectly quote from what they have written? If not, do I need to translate the user names from Chinese to English even though lots of the user names don’t really make sense in general?

The first question also leads me to another question which is about synthesizing: Is it necessary for me to mention the participants and their specific answers wherever I try to come up with an organized way of explaining the situation based on my judgment in the main body of the paper? Or could I organize my thoughts in a more fluent and smooth way without constantly feeling the need to back up my statement by finding a specific answer given by a certain participant related to it? Also, since my paper would be a qualitative research, does it mean I don’t have to give any percentage or number in order to prove the credibility of my statement?    

About Appendix: I understand that I should include the final version of my research plan in the appendix, which is basically about answering 8 overarching questions. But I was also wondering: is my research plan the only thing I am required to include in the appendix? Do I also need to include all of the screen-shots of the answers from participants online that I draw inspiration from in my paper as well as attach the final versions of all the Google Sheets I make relating to a detailed picture of my observations of relevant discussions?  



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