Research Tips Blog

Walking Interviews: Studying Experience in Place

Lili_Luo — Thu, 08 Oct 2026 22:41:00 +0000

Published: Oct 15, 2026

Most qualitative interviews take place while the researcher and participant are sitting across from one another, either in person or online. But sometimes the place itself is part of the experience you want to understand. In those cases, a walking interview can offer a different kind of insight.

A walking interview, sometimes called a go-along interview, involves talking with participants while moving through a setting that is relevant to the research. The researcher might walk with a participant through a library, campus, neighborhood, workplace, or other meaningful environment while asking questions along the way. Research suggests that walking interviews can generate especially rich, place-specific data because participants respond not only to questions, but also to what they see, remember, and experience in the environment around them.

Using Personas in Research: Method or Design Tool?

Lili_Luo — Fri, 11 Sep 2026 02:05:00 +0000

Published: Sep 15, 2026

Personas are common in user experience and design work. They are fictional but research-informed representations of different types of users, often including their goals, behaviors, needs, motivations, and challenges. But personas can also raise an important question for researchers: Are they a research method, or are they simply a design tool?

The answer is usually somewhere in between. Personas are not typically a standalone research method in the same way that interviews, surveys, or ethnography are. Instead, they are usually developed from research data and then used to organize, communicate, and apply what researchers have learned about a group of users. Researchers have

Object Elicitation: Using Objects to Prompt Richer Interviews

Lili_Luo — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 02:29:00 +0000

Published: Aug 15, 2026

Qualitative interviews usually rely on questions and conversation. But sometimes asking a participant to talk about an experience is not enough to bring back the details, emotions, or memories connected to it. Object elicitation offers another approach: introducing a physical or digital object into the interview and using it as a prompt for discussion.

The object might be a photograph, book, document, piece of clothing, keepsake, artwork, screenshot, or another artifact that has meaning for the participant. Instead of beginning only with a question such as “Tell me about your experience,” the researcher might ask, “Why did you choose this object?” or “What does this object represent to you?”

Using AI to Assist Qualitative Data Analysis

Lili_Luo — Wed, 13 May 2026 04:10:00 +0000

Published: May 15, 2026

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of many researchers’ workflows, including qualitative research. If you are working with interviews, focus groups, open-ended survey responses, fieldnotes, or documents, AI can help with some parts of analysis. But it works best as a support tool, not as a replacement for the researcher. Recent discussions in qualitative research emphasize that AI may assist with organizing and exploring data, while interpretation and meaning-making still need to remain human-led.

Digital Storytelling as a Research Method

Lili_Luo — Thu, 23 Apr 2026 16:07:00 +0000

Published: Apr 23, 2026

Researchers often rely on interviews, surveys, and written reflections to understand people’s experiences. But sometimes those formats do not fully capture how people make meaning of their lives. Digital storytelling offers another approach. It is a creative, participatory method in which people create short first-person multimedia stories, often using voice narration, photographs, video, and music. Researchers use it to explore lived experience, identity, memory, and community in a way that centers participant voice.

When to Use a Scoping Review in LIS Research

Lili_Luo — Sat, 14 Mar 2026 22:00:00 +0000

Published: Mar 13, 2026

Library and information science researchers often start with a broad question: What do we know about this topic, and how has it been studied? When the goal is to map a field rather than answer a narrow question about effectiveness, a scoping review can be a useful choice.

A scoping review is designed to identify the size, range, and nature of research on a topic. It is especially helpful when a subject is emerging, interdisciplinary, or defined in inconsistent ways. In LIS, that might include topics such as AI in libraries, digital equity, or information practices in online communities.

Q Methodology: A Useful Method to Study Viewpoints

Lili_Luo — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 16:50:00 +0000

Published: Feb 14, 2026

I was once in a research meeting where everyone agreed on the problem; at least, that’s what it sounded like. “We need better privacy protections.” “We need personalization.” “We need trust.” Heads nodded… until we tried to define what any of those words meant in practice. Suddenly, we weren’t debating facts so much as worldviews. That’s the kind of moment where Q methodology can be useful.

Q methodology (often called “Q”) is designed to study subjectivity, e.g. the patterns in

Vignettes in Research: A Practical Method for Studying Real-World Decisions in LIS

Lili_Luo — Fri, 23 Jan 2026 18:48:00 +0000

Published: Jan 19, 2026

Imagine you want to study how students react when a professor “suggests” they cite only certain sources, or how faculty decide whether to pay an APC for open access, or how patrons respond to a challenging reference interaction. You could ask people directly: “What would you do?” But direct questions often trigger socially desirable answers, vague generalities, or discomfort, especially when the topic is sensitive.

That’s where vignette research may be helpful.

Meta-ethnography for LIS: A Practical Guide

Lili_Luo — Fri, 07 Nov 2025 17:15:00 +0000

Published: Nov 15, 2025

Meta-ethnography is a qualitative synthesis method that goes beyond summarizing studies to interpret them together. Developed by George W. Noblit and R. Dwight Hare in 1988, it’s built around “translating” key concepts across studies to generate new, third-order insights, often theoretical models you couldn’t see from any single paper.

Noblit & Hare outlined seven iterative phases. Below is a LIS-friendly rendering:

Getting started – Define the phenomenon (e.g., “information avoidance in teens”)

Tips for Recruiting, Selecting, and Onboarding Student Research Assistant

Lili_Luo — Fri, 17 Oct 2025 16:26:00 +0000

Published: Oct 17, 2025

Hiring student research assistants can greatly enhance both research productivity and student learning. Effective recruitment, selection, and onboarding ensure that the experience benefits everyone involved. This blog post summarize best practices for faculty members seeking to hire and mentor student assistants.

The process begins with clarity. Before advertising the position, define the assistant’s responsibilities, required skills, time commitment, and expected outcomes. Consider

When Teaching Becomes Research: Using Action Research to Bridge Pedagogy and Scholarship

Lili_Luo — Mon, 15 Sep 2025 18:10:00 +0000

Published: Sep 19, 2025

As instructors, we constantly experiment with our teaching practices. We adjust an assignment to increase engagement, redesign a discussion format to draw out quieter students, or try new technologies to support collaboration. Often, these choices are guided by intuition, experience, and the immediate needs of our students. But what if those same teaching decisions could also form the basis of rigorous research? What if our everyday practice could generate scholarship that not only improves our own courses, but also contributes to the broader conversation about pedagogy in higher education?

Capturing Key Moments: Applying the Critical Incident Technique in LIS Studies

Lili_Luo — Thu, 14 Aug 2025 19:12:00 +0000

Published: Aug 20, 2025

If you are looking for a research method that could uncover the nuance that turns data into deep insight, you may consider the Critical Incident Technique (CIT). Originally developed in the 1950s in applied psychology, CIT invites participants to recount specific, memorable events, moments that stand out because they were either exceptionally positive or notably challenging. In the LIS world, these could be anything from the time a librarian’s quick thinking saved a researc

Exploring Social Media Ethnography: A Window into Digital Lives

Lili_Luo — Fri, 16 May 2025 16:01:00 +0000

Published: May 16, 2025

In a world where much of our social interaction, identity formation, and information exchange happens online, social media ethnography has emerged as a powerful method for exploring how people live, relate, and make sense of the world in virtual spaces. At its core, social media ethnography is the adaptation of traditional ethnographic practices—long-term observation, immersion in communities, and rich, qualitative description—to online platforms like TikTok, Reddit, Instagram, and X (formerly Twitter). Rather than entering a physical village or institution, the researcher steps into a hashtag community, a fandom group, or a forum thread, observing how

Pre-register Your Study: Ideas for Library and Information Science Researchers

Lili_Luo — Fri, 04 Apr 2025 15:47:00 +0000

Published: Apr 14, 2025

One of the recent research trends is pre-registration. More and more researchers are pre-registering their studies. Pre-registration means documenting your research plan — including your hypotheses, methods, and analysis strategies — before you collect or analyze your data. This record is then time-stamped and stored (often publicly) in a registry. It doesn’t prevent you from being curious, exploratory, or adjusting plans as needed. It just makes sure readers know what was planned in advance versus discovered along the way.

Harnessing AI for Designing Data Collection Instruments

Lili_Luo — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 16:28:00 +0000

Published: Mar 14, 2025

In recent years, generative artificial intelligence (AI) has become a powerful tool for researchers in library and information science (LIS). Whether conducting user experience research, evaluating digital library services, or studying reading behaviors, LIS scholars often rely on well-designed data collection instruments such as surveys, interview guides, and codebooks for content analysis. AI can enhance these processes and increase efficiency in designing data collection instruments. Yet, AI-generated content should always be critically evaluated and revised to align with best practices in research methodology.

Effective Prompting When Using AI to Assist Research

Lili_Luo — Tue, 25 Feb 2025 19:55:00 +0000

Published: Feb 19, 2025

In the evolving landscape of academic research, Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools like ChatGPT and others have become indispensable partners for tasks ranging from literature reviews to data analysis, drafting manuscripts, and brainstorming ideas. However, using AI effectively requires more than just typing in a question—it begins with crafting a well-thought-out prompt. The way you phrase your request can significantly impact the quality and relevance of the AI’s response.

Unlocking Stories: The Power of Narrative Inquiry

Lili_Luo — Thu, 09 Jan 2025 19:08:00 +0000

Published: January 11, 2025

In the realm of Library and Information Science (LIS), where understanding users’ experiences and behaviors is paramount, narrative inquiry emerges as a compelling research method. Rooted in the interpretive tradition of qualitative research, narrative inquiry explores how individuals construct meaning through storytelling. This method offers LIS researchers an avenue to delve deeply into users’ lived experiences, uncovering rich insights about how they seek, access, and use information.

Using Generative AI Tools in Assisting Literature Research

Lili_Luo — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 22:55:00 +0000

Published: November 13, 2024

AI tools have become valuable allies for researchers, especially in conducting literature reviews. By automating time-consuming tasks like summarizing studies, extracting key themes, and identifying influential papers, AI streamlines the review process, allowing researchers to focus on analysis and interpretation. Tools like Consensus, Scite, and Elicit help synthesize complex data, provide evidence-based summaries, and even reveal emerging trends. This combination of efficiency and depth is transforming how literature reviews are conducted, making it easier to manage vast volumes of

Autoethnography: A Deeply Personal Method for Qualitative Research

Lili_Luo — Thu, 17 Oct 2024 03:02:00 +0000

Published: October 16, 2024

Autoethnography is a qualitative research method that blends elements of autobiography and ethnography to explore the researcher’s personal experiences in relation to broader social and cultural contexts. It goes beyond traditional ethnography by incorporating the researcher’s own reflections as part of the data, thereby revealing how personal stories intersect with larger social issues. This method is not only a way to collect data but also an approach that critiques the boundaries between the researcher and the researched, emphasizing subjectivity and self-reflection.

Photovoice: A Unique Participatory Research Method for Library and Information Sciences

Lili_Luo — Wed, 25 Sep 2024 17:16:00 +0000

Published: September 25th, 2024

Photovoice is an innovative research method that integrates photography and narratives to empower participants in expressing their experiences and perspectives on specific social issues. It was first introduced by Caroline Wang and Mary Ann Burris in the 1990s as a participatory action research tool, often applied in public health, education, and social science research. Participants take photographs related to the study topic, and these visuals are then used as prompts for discussion, analysis, and presentation, providing a voice to marginalized or underrepresented groups.