One Campus - Many Ways to Go?! A methodological comparison of paper-pencil and electronic log-books when exploring students' patterns of spatial use

The following article is based on a lecture held at the ESA Conference ‘Innovating Qualitative Research: Challenges and Opportunities’ in Bayreuth on September the 22th 2010. Opening with the relevance of the logbook for social research alongside the example of the ‘My Campus’ project, methodic and methodological insights in the use of logbooks are presented. Operating with paper pencil logbook to observe students’ pat-terns of spatial use, the advantages and disadvantages of the logbook as a research instrument and the dif-ferences towards electronic logbooks are illustrated here. Further it is taken a closer look on aspects regarding the researcher as well as the user of this instrument to close with an outlook on its further development in social research.
Keywords: qualitative empirical social research.