Theme 4 - Post reflection

This week's theme focused on quantitative research, and naturally qualitative research was also brought up to contrast and discuss.

The reading consisted of a paper of our own choosing which used qualitative research methods and a study conducted by Kilteni et al. about virtual reality, VR, and body ownership during those circumstances. I found the reading very interesting! The paper about VR used qualitative research methods in the sense that is measured participants movement patterns and drew conclusions based on the numbers alone. The paper I chose was called "Information, expression, participation: How involvement in user generated concent relates to democratic engagement among young people", it investigated if youths who post a lot of unser generated concent online are more engaged in politics both online and offline. It was a very readable study! It used a quantitative questionnaire as its main method, one containing no free text questions but only ones which's answers could be quantified and be used in statistical measurements.

During the lecture qualitative and quantitative methods were discussed a bit and the paper on VR was explained in depth, especially the statistics they had done to arrive at their result. Even though I did find the study interesting I did not find the lecture especially giving. I think there was too much specific information on that one study for my liking.

During the seminar we discussed in smaller groups, my group discussed both qualitative and quantitative methods and their weak and strong points. We discussed how quantitative research provides data on which statistical measurements can be conducted and therefore the result could be generalised on a wider sample than the specific one used in the study, it is also in many cases less time consuming to collect data but a great deal of data has to be collected in order for the result to be statistically relevant. Qualitative methods often provide a wider picture since it contains more open questions and issues and pheomenons the researcher did not anticipate could occur more easily since the study is not as "boxed in". However qualitative data cannot be generalised and so the result is relevant on a much smaller sample, it is also often more time consuming than qualitative methods in both the data gathering and analysis. We also discussed how in qualitative research it is even more important that the researcher try to remain as objective as possible since the data gathered has to be analysed using a more subjective method than statistical measurements.

During the dicussion we discussed that if the time and resources are available a mix between both methods could sometimes be a good alternative. It is also good if qualitative research leads to quantitative and the other way around, if one study looks into something using quantitative methods it is sometimes relevant for another study to look into the same thing using qualitative methods.

I feel that during this theme I could relate to things I had done and learnt before to a greater extent than during the previous themes. Quantitative and qualitative research methods were discussed in depth during the degree project we wrote last semester. In my small seminar group we also discussed what everyone had done in their project and what research methods were used. We concluded that by conducting a study in that project we learnt a lot about research methods and that when we conduct our final degree project we will look at research methods in a different light after having actually used them. Another very interesting subject we touched upon during this discussion is how not actually getting a result in a study is perhaps looked down upon, why publish a study with a non-result? But those studies are interesting too! The fact that no result was found is a result in itself.

I do not know if I learnt that much specific information during this week's theme. The concepts were pretty clear to me before. But I found it interesting to discuss studies and learn how others thought about the concepts.