encompasse this kind of social phenomena that occurred within social networking website Facebook.
It was also essential thing to reveal reasons of using code switching used by Facebook users in their pages since the phenomenon of code switching was
considered as social phenomena that occurred in social community. Merriam 2002, p. 2-3 stated that the understanding of the nature of qualitative research
could be situated with the idea that meaning was socially constructed by individuals in interaction with their world, in which there were some actions or
process of flowing of multiple constructions and interpretations. On the other hand, the meanings and interpretations they made might be changed continuously.
Merriam 2002, p. 5-6 stated several characteristics of qualitative research in his book
All qualitative research is characterized by the search of meaning and understanding, the researcher as the primary instrument of data collection
and analysis, an inductive investigative strategy, and a richly descriptive end product.
Thus, using qualitative research was the most appropriate method to convey this research, since the understanding was the goal of this study, and the human
instrument came across as a tool of collecting and analyzing data.
B. Research Participants
Since the objective of this study was to observe the occurrence of code switching within a social networking website Facebook and to reveal possible
reasons of its occurrence, then Facebook and its users were considered as two major sources of data. The participants of this research were taken from list of
primary friends of the researcher which have different ages and came from various social backgrounds. The range of their ages was 15 up to 62 years old and
most of the participants were students of high school andor university students. It is also noted that the participants were not students of English Education Program
or English Letters Program of any university. The purpose of this selection of the participants was to obtain a valid data of the research.
This research was divided into two methods of data collection. The first method was through observation, and the result of the data is 89 of 500 Facebook
users’ of researcher’s primary friend were containing code switching cases. It was started from November 27
th
, 2009 up to December 7
th
, 2009. The result came with 185 data gained from Facebook pages of the targets.
The second method employed by the researcher to collect the data was through in-depth interview to twenty Facebook users of the researcher’s primary
friends. The fact of frequency of code switching occurred in their pages was the main reason of my research objectives. Those interviews were conducted from
January 20
th
, 2010 up to February 12nd, 2010. The importance of these informants was significant to this study since it
was one of the characteristics of qualitative research. The other importance was to acquire a rich and deep description of code switching in social networking
website Facebook.
C. Research Instruments
As has been mentioned above, that one of characteristics of qualitative research was its instrument in order to gather data. Merriam 2002, p. 5 states that
A second characteristic of all forms of qualitative research is that the researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and data analysis.
Since understanding is the goal of this research, the human instrument, which seem to be the ideal means of collecting and analyzing data.
Therefore, the researcher became the primary instrument in order to collect and analyze the data required. Nevertheless, still the researcher engaged two kinds of
data collection to facilitate the data, namely observation and in-depth interview. 1.
Observation Marshall and Rosman 2006, p. 99 stated that “Observation is a
fundamental and highly important method in all qualitative inquiry.” They believed that observation was used to discover complex interactions in natural
social settings. The researcher used observation in order to obtain data from Facebook users’ pages. In this context, the researcher conducted three steps in
doing the observation. First, the researcher made the observation form that contained when the
data were taken, Facebook usernames, and the evidences. This observation form was designed to make the researcher easier to analyze the data. The design of the
observation form can be seen in Appendix 2. Second, the researcher examined thoroughly Facebook users’ pages that
are being targeted. This was conducted because some Facebook users used some abbreviated words on the sentences they made. Thus, it was important to read
their sentences carefully and thoroughly. Third, the data gathered were listed on the observation form. In this step,
the researcher had to italicize words, phrases, and sentences that are assumed to be
code switching data. This step was also aimed to make the research easier to be analyzed.
2. In-depth interview.
Kahn and Cannel 1957 as quoted by Marshall and Rossman 2006, p.101 described interviewing as “a conversation with a purpose.” Consequently,
in order to obtain the data the researcher had to design and to structure a set of questions that will be questioned. In addition, in-depth interviewing also required
good interpretative skills from the researcher in order to analyze the data. By conducting in-depth interviewing, the researcher should not give any intervention
to the partipants’ perspectives on the phenomenon of interest.
D. Data Gathering Technique
