The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 36, No. 2 - 97

ResNet Symposium Programs 1995-2006

presentations at the annual conference of the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on University and College Computing Services (SIGUCCS) described “the methods, challenges, and success stories of end user computing support services in colleges and universities [during the period studied]” (p. 1). We hoped that similar analysis of conference presentation information to draw conclusions about the conference and the larger context would add to the knowledge about residential computer networks.

the data in the context of our individual and collective experiences and expertise without explicitly relying on preconceived theories or categories of data. ECA provided us with a conceptual framework that both provided structure and allowed us the freedom necessary to follow these data where they led us. To identify historical trends in presentations submitted to and accepted for presentation at the ResNet Symposium, we analyzed program data for 513 programs presented at the ResNet Symposium from 1995 through 2006. Data on presentations were drawn from archived conference proceedings on the ResNet organization Web site and conference program guides; data from 1994, the first year of the symposium, could not be located in time to be included in the analysis. Specific presentation data analyzed included title, abstract, presenter(s) name(s), and presenter(s) institution(s). Analysis primarily focused on titles and abstracts. After collecting the program data, the researcher coordinating the coding of programs assigned each program a unique number and removed information from the program title and abstract that could potentially bias the initial coding of programs (institution names, presenter names, and years). Each program title and abstract pair was then assigned to two different researchers to analyze. Each researcher assigned each presentation to one or more categories describing the presentation’s content, the presenter’s method of presenting the content, or both. Some programs focused on multiple related topics and received multiple codes describing their content. Given the constant comparative nature of this methodology, these categories were revised many times as we gained new
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METHODOLOGY
The primary methodology employed in this study was an Ethnographic Content Analysis (ECA). This methodology, adapted from media analysis, explicitly acknowledges the “reflexive and highly interactive nature of the investigator” (Altheide, 1996, p. 16). ECA differs significantly from quantitative content analysis methodologies where the emphasis is on the coding protocols as based on a priori theory with a significant emphasis on quantitative measurement. Although ECA allows for some level of statistical analysis, its primary focus is a holistic understanding of the documents and the phenomena they describe with a view towards “constant discovery and constant comparison of relevant situations” (Altheide, 1996, p. 16). In practice this methodology has many similarities to constant comparative methodologies (Creswell, 2002; Schwandt, 2001), but in contrast to them, ECA allows for exploratory research not grounded in theory established prior to conducting the study (Altheide, 1996). Given the exploratory nature of this research, it was necessary to utilize a methodology such as ECA that allowed us to interpret and analyze

The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 36, No. 2

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of The Journal of College and University Student Housing - Volume 36, No. 2