Common use of Data and Sample Clause in Contracts

Data and Sample. We conducted a three-year longitudinal multi-method field study of political-organizing organizations located in the United States that used e- mail listserves extensively for their communications. These organizations included, for instance, an international women’s organization, a university peace organization, an environmental organization, and a community improvement organization. We collected e-mail data from these organizations over a period of 36 months by becoming a member of the general list serves for the organizations, conducting interviews with members, taking field notes at meetings, and collecting hard copies of handouts from organizational meetings and other ideological materials, similar to the methods employed by ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ and ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ (1993). Given the complexity of influence attempts, as well as conflict, the use of qualitative research methods in conjunction with traditional quantitative methods is an especially useful way to study the relationships between influence, conflict, and performance (c.f. ▇▇▇▇▇ & ▇▇▇▇▇▇, 2004; Jehn, 1997; ▇▇▇, 1999). The quantitative data in our study stem primarily from text analyses and coding of our e-mail sample. Our total e-mail sample consisted of 7,617 e-mails, sent from a total of 631 members representing 10 different organizations. Fifty-four percent of the members were female, and the average member age was 33. All e-mails in our sample were sent to the entire organization via the group listserve, and the vast majority of organizational members participated on the e-mail listserve. For example, in an interview, one member stated: “E-mail is, like, very useful. I would say it is much more useful than, like, hanging flyers but does that make sense? It is just a mass mobilization.” No significant differences were found across the organizations on our variables of interest. On average, members communicated with each other over the e-mail listserve five times per week (and around actions every day), attended meetings once a month, and political action events (e.g., protests) two or three times in the year. We did have two organizations in which members only interacted online, which allowed us to compare conflict engagement between members who interacted only online and who interacted both online and face- to-face. In a multivariate analysis of the variables in our study, we did not find any significant differences to exist between members in organizations who only interacted online and members in organizations who interacted both online and face-to-face.