Despite the name of the theme this week was Quantitative research, Qualitative research was a part of the weeks lectures and discussions and even one of the questions in the theme, which naturally couldn’t be avoided as I think knowledge to qualitative research is necessary in order to distinguish quantitative research.
One of the things I take with me this prior week is that qualitative research can be of use in the humanistic field, like psychology. It can also be used in relation to prototypes as a kind of tool to observe its design and its performance.
One thing I looked further into after the seminar was “Wicked problem”. I think it can be something worth knowing about and there are papers written on this subject [2]. It is used in the cases where it is hard to or impossible to solve a problem [1]. I think this goes in relation to the next theme because of the connection between Wicked problems and Design thinking [3].
I do not think I would change my answers to the questions in the theme that much after the lecture and seminar. But one thing I probably would have looked more into was how many participants are required into having a reliable results in a survey as there are guidelines in how to calculate the number of required participants (as talked about in the lecture).
In my conclusion, I think it can be of importance to know the difference between qualitative and quantitative research when doing research even though one does not take a whole course in the subject. Which one to use for what purposes, can be decisive in the matter of results in the work of a good quality paper.
[1]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem Retrieved Oct 2015.
[2]
http://www.jstor.org/stable/1511637?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents Retrieved Oct 2015.
[3]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking#Wicked_problems Retrieved Oct 2015.
I completely agree with your comment that you need to discuss qualitative methods as well when talking about and understanding quantitative methods. You have written an interesting reflection and I enjoyed reading it. During our seminar we also discussed if one method is more objective than the other and discussed how researchers influence studies regardless of the method used which affects the objectivity when using quantitative methods as well as qualitative, although possibly not to the same degree.
SvaraRaderaHi, thanks for sharing us with your thoughts! Your reflection toward the lecture and the seminar was written neatly and well, from which I could see your effort in preparing the seminars. I specially like your idea on the wicked problems, which inspired my thinking. Good job!
SvaraRaderaI agree with you that knowledge of qualitative is vital for success in any type of research endeavor. It is interesting you brought up the issue of “Wicked problem”, and I totally agree that it worth at least discussing about. I like that you are holding your grounds and are not changing your pre-lecture blog answers. Well said, your text was quite concise and straight forward. Good job!
SvaraRaderaHi,
SvaraRaderathanks for explanation of Wicked problem. I have not heard anything about this terminology before. You wrote down important statement that qualitative method is "a kind of tool to observe its (prototype) design and performance." For example, “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play” study is quantitative research based on qualitative methods which were used in order to design appropriate framework. Reading you pre-blog on theme 4 I noticed that in your mind, quantitative research doesn’t answer the question ‘why". Did you change the opinion on that statement after the seminar? In my mind, quantitative research must give the answer to the "why" otherwise it is only the bunch of data without logic argumentation.
Hej,
SvaraRaderaYou chose a paper with a special research method because you had two different sources of data. That was more interesting to read than some other students' posts!
We also talked about the wicked problem in our seminar group, it's an interesting phenomenon!
I also agree, like the previous commenters, that when you talk about quantitative research methods you automatically start talking about qualitative ones, as well. It felt like a natural course of discussion in the seminar and in the lecture. It think it is quite often that it becomes easier to understand something by comparing it with its counterpart!
Hi!
SvaraRaderaNice reflection! I read your pre post, I only had one comment. You wrote that quantitative methods can not answer the question why. I do believe they can answer those question but in a limited way. As which the qualitative method can dig deeper on the answer. For example on a questionnaire for iPad users you could ask the question "For what purpose did you buy your iPad?" then they could choose multiple answers to why they bought it. So you could get the answer to why but it limits you to dig deeper on that answer through a quantitative method.
We did not talk about wicked problem, fun that you brought it up could be interesting for me to look it up now :)
Keep it up!
I also agree that it's helpful to discuss qualitative research when trying to define what quantitative research is, it's almost always easier to discuss the opposite
SvaraRaderalike that you used references in your post reflection, it shows that you have an ambitious approach to this course. However, I'm not sure how "serious" a wikipedia reference is. It seems like you've learned something from this week, which is a really good thing, so that's nice! Keep up the good work!
Hi, your reflection of this theme is a little bit different from previous ones, I agree this theme is a little bit hard to conclude since the lecture and seminar may not bring too many new things. But you catch the kernel topic of this theme, which is about the difference between quantitative and qualitative research. Nice reflection.
SvaraRadera