I was a lot more familiar with this week’s theme than those in the preceding weeks, and because of this I didn’t really learn anything that made me look at things in a different perspective than before.
The articles I read—Pupil responses to continuous aiming movements and Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality—was very interesting and I had no trouble reading through both thoroughly.
What I learned by reading the papers and from the lecture was that preparations before conducting quantitative research is vital; if you for example don’t have enough participants in your study the confidence interval of your statistics will be too low and the resulting theory will not be taken seriously.
In the lecture I learned that some disciplines, such as experimental psychology, mainly use standard questionnaires because it takes several years to create new ones since you have to pilot test the questionnaires extensively and fix potential errors until they are considered good enough to be used in research to create new theories. However, in other disciplines, such as ours, it is okay to create new questionnaires yourself without having to pilot test as extensively and still have your research considered to be of high quality.
In the seminar we discussed how quantitative research comes from the sciences (physics, chemistry, etc.), and that qualitative research comes from the humanities (psychology etc.)
We talked about how both qualitative and quantitative research answer the question “Why?”, and how both of them can be conducted by observing, and analysing, existing data or by creating new data and then analysing it.
We also discussed how quantitative research methods are created by using qualitative methods; because you create the research methods iteratively in the design process with pilot tests and such.
Hi,
ReplyDeletewe also discussed the testing of scales within social sciences in order to make sure that reliability, validity and objectivity are guaranteed. Since I studied something mediapsychology related it's interesting to read, that in media technology it's okay to create new questionnaires yourself. I guess it's okay, in order to cover the descriptive statistic data, but might be problematic if it's about more scientific topics.
Your reflection sums up all important points, such as differences between quantitative and qualitative methods and what the advantages/disadvantages are.
Great work!
Hi!
ReplyDeleteI have to say, it was quite nice to have a theme with a familiar concept, though it felt that one didn't learn anything new about these methods. I agree with you on fact that I think that preparations are key for conducting a well argued, "theory strong" and high quality report. We also discussed during my seminar that both of these methods can be used on order to answer the same questions; I've seen some posts that argue for the contrary, but I strongly believe that it's possible although the method used might fit better or worse in some cases!
Hej,
ReplyDeleteYou chose a very interesting paper for this theme. And, as you also wrote in your reflection, it seems like you already knew a lot about quantitative research. You discuss the methodology in the eye-tracking study in detail and seem to have a good understanding of what you are talking about. I actually also knew quite a lot about quantitative research before this theme, but just like you, I also learned new things in the lecture, as for example how much more time than what I had anticipated a study preparation can take!
Hello.
ReplyDeleteA lot of people feel that they did not learn anything new during this theme, and I agree to some extent. I feel that it is really important to prepare for a research and have a really good base to stand on. I do not really know what you mean by that it is ok for us to not be as accurate when creating new questionnaires? Why would not the way we gather data matter just as much as in other fields? That is what we build our theories and analyses on.
Anyway, good job!
Hi,
ReplyDeleteDifferent from others, you highlighted a good argument that 'preparations before conducting quantitative research is vital'. This is a very good perspective to the theme study, and I believe this will also be useful in practice. You are quite right on the questionnaire discussion, and it is very interesting to see that in your seminar you talked about How both qualitative and quantitative research answer the question “Why?” Because in our seminar, we were thinking that maybe qualitative research mainly answer the question 'why' while quantitative research focuses more on 'what' or 'how'. As we thought the problem from different departures, it would be interesting for us to have a further discussion on that. Lastly, I agree with you again on the use of the method combination. It is very practical and helpful for future studies. Thanks for your sharing.