What are your Favorite Methods? - an Examination on the Frequency of Research Methods for is Conferences from 2006 to 2010

The objective of this study was to analyze, which research methodologies are currently being used in the field of Information Systems (IS). To analyze research activities from different parts of the world, the proceedings of five conferences “on Information Systems” were included over a five year period from 2006 to 2010. In addition to the “International Conference on Information Systems” (ICIS), papers were also taken from the regional Americas (AMCIS), Australasian (ACIS), European (ECIS) and Pacific Asia (PACIS) conferences on information systems. The results of this study indicated that two methods were most popular at conferences by far: “survey” and “concept implementation / proof of concept”. Both at conferences and in journals in the IS field, researchers concentrated on only a few research methods, which meant that many other research methods were rarely used. Across all conferences, a trend towards methods orientation could be observed. Only few conference-specific differences in method usage could be found. Across all conferences, researchers noted a slightly increasing trend towards using combinations of methods. Some differences in preferred method combinations could be identified among regional conferences and ICIS. Compared to recent journalbased studies, the favored research methods were quite similar.