Reflection on Theme 4

This weeks theme was about quantitative research. I have studied papers “Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?”and “Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection” to analyze quantitative approach and understand how they can be used in researches.

During the seminar we have divided into groups as usual. After a brief discussion about our papers in group we select one of our papers to examine the usage of quantitative method in terms of developing a diagram which shows the relationship between research content and resulted conclusion by drawing patterns in between. Our group have chosen my paper for analyzing which was very beneficial for me to clarify my knowledge about the usage of quantitative methods in my paper and the link between hypothesis and conclusion.

Moreover the lecture on Wednesday was also very entertaining and interesting. We discussed the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative methods in a competitive way. Furthermore we talked about the benefits and disadvantages of web based questionnaires and paper questionnaires.

What I learned from both seminar and lecture was that qualitative research methods provides detailed and in depth information about the content. It enables deeper understanding about the subject. As being a heuristic approach, with the new information that qualitative methods provides as a result, researchers can create hypothesis and base it on those results. Furthermore qualitative methods answer question “Why?”. Another benefit of them is that participants can give open answers which could enable variety of data as a result.

On the other hand quantitative methods enables researchers to test and prove their hypothesis. It provides a statistical data which enable researchers to make generalizations. It requires less effort, with a single approach researchers can reach a large number of participants and ask a great number of questions. As predefined answers are being used within this approach, participant's answers are completely related to area of research.

Moreover in my opinion both questionnaire techniques(web-based and paper) have their own advantages and disadvantages. For instance web based questionnaire can be easier to conduct than paper one also response time can be very short. However it can only be used in places where people have computers or smart devices so it can not be suitable for the whole public. Whereas paper questioners are more environment friendly and require no additional equipment to fill in but they require more time and effort in terms of distributing and collecting results.

To conclude using both methodologies have their own benefits and disadvantages. In my opinion how to choose one of them is totally dependent on the subject. I think in some cases using both of them could be the best solution.