Theme 4: Quantitative research

This week’s theme is quantitative research, so before answering the questions I thought I would quickly go through what quantitative methods are.

Quantitative methods are built on numbers. The research method was originally built for natural sciences, but today it includes surveys, laboratory experiments, formal methods such as econometics, and numerical methods such as mathematical modelling. Quantitative research is based on gathering data in forms of numbers and analyzing it. This is in contrast to qualitative methods, which are more closely associated with social sciences. Interviews are an example of a qualitative method.

The article I read this week was called “The Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale: An empirical investigation” and had an impact factor of 2,69. As the title says, the article investigates in the usage of media technologies and what the attitude is towards it. With this background, I’ll continue to the questions for this week.

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

A questionnaire. The participants of the study first answered 40 questions regarding their usage of different devices such as smartphone, computer, telephone etc, and what activity they used it for. The participants answered on a scale from 1-10, where 1 meant “Never” and 10 meant “All the time”. All the numbers in between had a defined answer such as “Once a day”, “Once a month”, “Several times an hour” etc. There was an additional part of the survey asking about Facebook more specifically, questions regarding how many Facebook friends the participant have and how many they know in person etc. For this, the answering alternatives were between 1 and 9 with different intervalls where 1 meant zero friends and 9 meant 751 friends or more. The last part of the interview contained of 16 questions regarding attitudes toward the usage of the devices with its functions and attitude toward switching between tasks, and whether this came with positive, negative or anxious feelings. The answers were a number between 1 and 5, where 1 meant “Strongly agree” and 5 meant “Strongly disagree”.

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

That you can collect a lot of data in a fairly easy and quick way. Today it’s very easy to reach a lot of people with a survey since most people are active online and can be contacted through e-mail or even through social medias. It’s difficult to analyze some subjects with only quantitative data though, it’s to prefer to combine it with qualitative research.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

I think it seems difficult to research such a wide field - they included all types of devices and functions to the survey. They get a picture of what people tend to think and feel overall but the quantitative data is not enough on its own to really give important information. You want to know why these results occur, and it can be difficult to explain thoughts and feelings through numbers. You get good results on how much time people spend in general on social media. You know what they do on social media. You don’t really know why they do it. So while the quantitative data gives a good background and is easy to present in itself, it doesn’t leave much room for the participants to explain their answers and results, to explain their feelings.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

A benefit from using quantitative data is that it is easier to compare results and what different participants have answered. You can make models from it and you can draw conclusions. For natural science subjects, it’s very suitable. Let’s say you want to examine how a new medical treatment works - if you can measure the results you get real quantitative data and you can draw conclusions. But the moment you want to investigate something concerning people’s thoughts and feelings, it gets tricky. This is difficult to put into numbers.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

It’s more difficult to compare results. People interpret questions in different ways unless you are very clear and defines everything in the question. It’s still a challenge. Also, people tend to be interested in different things and have different opinions on what’s important. If someone doesn’t mention the same thing as someone else, it doesn’t mean the participants don’t agree with eachother, they just don’t focus on the same thing.

The benefit is that you can ask “why” and get explanations on thoughts and feelings. This is why it works well with social science subjects.

Sources:
http://www.edu.plymouth.ac.uk/resined/quantitative/quanthme.htm#CONTENTS
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_research
The Media and Technology Usage and Attitudes Scale: An empirical investigation - L.D. Rosen et al. (2013)
http://ac.els-cdn.com/S0747563213001982/1-s2.0-S0747563213001982-main.pdf?_tid=67df7970-637a-11e5-acf0-00000aab0f6b&acdnat=1443181488_8fb10a845c65a5aa28a1de909624a3f7
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/260248022_The_Media_and_Technology_Usage_and_Attitudes_Scale_An_empirical_investigation
Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality - K. Kilteni et al (2013)
https://www.kth.se/social/files/56000bc9f2765448c25c5279/Drumming%20in%20Immersive%20Virtual%20Reality.pdf