Planning for this methodology is crucial, as the wrong tradition and framework would not allow for the most successful. There is a clear distinction between research traditions, method, an analytic framework (Schram, 2006). From this, the current research can define its research tradition under the phenomenology approach using semi structured interviewing methods with analysis focusing on coding and interpreting participant perceptions. The methodology will consist of semi-structured interviews where participants who have handled insider security threats in organizations share and elaborate on their experiences of how the threat occurred within the context of cloud computing components and platforms.
Third Proposed Research Design for Cloud Computing
Preliminary Qualitative Data Analysis Plan
There will be several layers of analysis and data collection throughout the context of this research. Participants will primarily be it professional and operational department figures that have had experience with insider threats in the past based on their implementation of cloud computing within the firms' it structure. These professionals have firsthand experience of dealing with insider threats on cloud computing platforms. Interviewing them means elaborating on their own experiences with combating internal threats, along with providing detailed and thorough insight from their own hindsight in regards to what could've been done to avoid the situation to begin with. Yet, there will also be a second-tier of participants, as top-level management will have to sign off and give approval for these interviewees participation within the study itself, along with allowing some documents to be provided in regards to certain security threat and how they were approached.
The research design plan will focus on data collection through a number of semi-structured interviews that pose questions to participant that are open ended. This design stems from the research tradition of phenomenology, which is commonly used in qualitative research. This research tradition focuses on elaborating and extrapolating certain themes from within the participant perceptions in order to find commonalities among the participants that would help lead to stronger assumptions regarding the nature of the research question. Under the assumptions of phenomenology, the research design will focus on semi-structured interviews. Thus, there will be particular questions or the written out, along with potential questions to be asked in instances of certain digressions from the topic. This will allow the researchers to adapt to any potential digressions that occur without failing stay focused on the topic at hand. Yet, the interview questions will be open ended. This allows for a certain amount of spontaneous answers on behalf of the participant which is important to be able to allow the participant's perceptions drive the nature of the data collection. Open ended questions are important for the researchers' notes to be able to help pull out common themes and categories cross different interviews. Moreover, these open-ended questions may be able to help adjust future interviews based on the answers of certain participants. The ability to have flexibility to adjust and change questions will help better direct the interview process. During the interview process, the interviewer will take extensive notes in regards what the participant is saying, the tone it was said in, any particularly frequent words or descriptions presented, and also body language. These notes will later help code and categorized particular themes found in individual interviews that can be compared to other interviews within the research process.
In order to ensure reliability and validity, the research is also going to use elements of methodological triangulation. Essentially, this is the concept that data should be collected from different sources in order to help show the same conclusion will be met from different data collection sources. As such, the participants will be asked to bring with them any data they provide in terms of documentation of insider threats, their own notes and strategies to combat those threats, and finalized security briefings that are available for this research review and utilize within the data collection process. It is well-known that some of the data desired here will be too sensitive to actually be used, however, there is a wide enough breadth of options that will allow participants to bring some form of alternative data that can be used to help measure the reliability and validity of the data collected from the interview process.
After data collection, data analysis. After each and every interview, the researcher will focus on coding and categorizing the bulk of the interview content by utilizing a number of field notes that were presented by Groenewald (2004) and outlined in Shank (2006). There are four layers of field notes that can be taken during the process of the interviews and directly after that will help with this process. First there are observational notes, which focus on the observation of the interview and the contents seen within it. Then there are theoretical notes, where the researcher begins to pull out certain theoretical elements found within the interview content. Third comes methodological notes, which are typically written either before or during the interview process and can help future interviews in terms of reminding the interviewer to do certain things at certain times. Finally, there are analytical notes which are typically written right after the interview had taken place. These are some of the more portal notes for the later coding categorizing particular themes. Abstract summaries of all the interviews are needed in order to be able to categorize them by particular themes. Summaries will also be written for each of the documents the participants supply to augment the interviewing process.
You’re 88% through this paper. Sign up to read the full paper.
Sign Up Now — Instant Access Already a member? Log inAlways verify citation format against your institution’s current style guide requirements.