This week has been about quantitative research and we discussed our papers more. Our group chose an article about perceived effectiveness when texting (Cho & Hong, 2011). Depending on the conflict avoidance and the privacy protection of the user you got a perceived effectiveness of using SMS for communication. I learned that this is what you call “intervening variables” which sounds pretty logical but I haven’t seen that before so I think that was a good new experience. Since most quantitative studies uses many factors in the beginning that later boils down to a couple of key factors, you can often summarize it to a sort of flowchart. The flowchart of the hypotheses being used were added to the course wiki.
The study was made in Hong Kong and Shanghai and the possibility to generalize these results were questioned during the seminar. We got to the conclusion that you don’t necessarily need to be able to generalize on every result in a paper like this one, but it can still contribute to the field in other ways. For example other researchers can continue the study and perform the same study in different locations and compare the results.
We did however localize something negative with the study. Apparently you are suppose to be able to replicate the study, and weaknesses lied in the fact that they didn’t clearly state where and when they handed out the questionnaires. I have a vague feeling of hearing this when writing my bachelor thesis but it worked as a good reminder to hear it again.
From the other groups we got summaries of papers about internet addiction, communication between teachers and students and social capital amongst social network users. It was nice to hear other examples and questions about how you measure different factors, for example what the difference is between complex and specific communication in a teacher-student relationship. We also got examples that you maybe shouldn’t try to generalize if the number of people are too low and that lead to another insight, you should be true to the study and not try to make it bigger than it really is.
Resources
Cho, Vincent. Hung,Humphrey. (2011) The effectiveness of Short Message Service for communication with concerns of privacy protection and conflict avoidance. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communications 16 (2011) 250-270.
In this seminar we discussed quantitative methods, in consideration to our last seminar (wednesday) that also contained discussion about qualitative methods. Did you get any new perception concerning either of these methods during the seminar?
SvaraRaderaMaybe it wasn't totally clear, although it seems possible since you address the question like: "In this seminar...", but I only attended the first seminar this week due to a meeting with our project supervisor in another course. So I'm guessing your question is about the qualitative methods from the wednesday seminar?
RaderaBecause of this I'm not quite sure exactly which qualitative methods you are referring to. When reading the bachelor thesis course I remember discussing interviews, focus groups and state-of-the-art research. Was any of these discussed and if so, how was that being connected to quantitative research (which this week was supposed to be about, qualitative research should be next weeks theme)? I read through your reflection (http://dm2572-teorimetod.blogspot.se/2013/12/reflection-of-theme-4-quantitative.html) but it doesn't seem to pick up any of these qualitative methods you are referring to?
To get some idea of what you mean, I instead looked at some other course blogs who wrote something about the wednesday seminar. Carl Ahrsjö (http://ahrsjo-tmm13.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-4-reflection.html) writes about the fact that qualitative methods can contribute with data to the quantitative methods. I'm guessing you, for example, could construct interviews and/or focus group discussions and use that data as building blocks for a questionnaire. That way you're questionnaire is better grounded than if you just write down questions you think will yield reasonable data.
Amanda Glass (http://dm2572-glass.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-4-reflection.html) takes up some good points about pros and cons with quantitative vs. qualitative research and how they can compliment each other. For example when interviewing smaller groups you have the opportunity to change questions or better explain them when the participants of the study doesn't understand something. And after participating in a couple of studies and filling out some questionnaires I know how easy it is to misinterpret something or how easy it is not to understand it at all. That's why I think it's important to test run your questionnaire (i.e. pilot study) to minimize the possibility for misinterpretation (could this be counted as the qualitative based questionnaire that Ahrsjö refers to?)
Martin Johansson (http://dm2572-martin.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-4-quantitative-research-reflection.html) and Oscar Friberg (http://ofri-teoriochmetod.blogspot.se/2013/12/theme-4-quantitative-research-reflection.html) both wrote more about online vs regular questionnaires, which from what I understand now, the seminar was partly about. I liked how you can use some sort of "rewards" i.e. feedback when filling out an online questionnaire, I haven't really thought of that before. And if you combine that with questions based on qualitative studies like interviews or focus groups I guess the connection between the two types of research methods (qualitative & quantitative) discussed in this course is completed. I never actually thought of doing it this way but it seems pretty logical to base your questions on something more than state-of-the-art research, I guess it also gives more validity to the study.