Sociological digital methods to explore personal educational way: internet forum

Abstract

This article presents the results of a methodological analysis of the digital sociological method of the Internet forum, that is, the study of thematic group discussions on the Internet, and compares the findings reached while studying the motives of the family choice of online schools in high school. Motives were studied in two ways by questioning students of online schools and by analyzing the parent forum about online schools on the Internet. Sociological information was processed in specialized computer text analysis programs. It has been established that the digital empirical technology “Internet forum” refers to the methods of document analysis and is related to the focus group. The Internet forum is relevant to the study of the educational way of a person, since the lists of arguments in favor of online education, received from questionnaires and group discussions on the Internet, almost coincided in content and frequency of occurrence of positions. The “Internet forum” method turned out to be complementary to the questionnaire and clarified some controversial collisions. The findings speak for the need to develop digital methods of sociological research, actively use the analysis of discussions on the Internet and online questioning to study educational problems and other topics.