Designing research
It was new for me that firstly you have design and piloting questionnaires, experiment or other measurable way which will give you data. It is very important because data must be interpreted in a logical way and this argument framework is homework before doing quantitative research because only data is not a theory. It is important to run a pilot test in order to validate a research way before actually carrying out it. Piloting includes not only testing and getting answers but participants’ reflection and evaluation are even more important. I revised again my selected research paper Using social media applications for educational outcomes in college teaching: A structural equation analysis (Yingxia Cao and Paul C Hong) and noticed that scholars did not mention anything about their piloting and refining process. It is only written that questionnaires are based on qualitative literature review and interviews with teachers. Talking about questionnaires I learnt this week that is very important to formulate the questions properly. For instance, avoid leading and assumption questions and it is very important to raise the question: Do these questions bring you data? All in all, designing and refinement of quantitative research in one way is a qualitative research which is very important part of process in order to get not only data but draw logical conclusions.
Quantitative vs Qualitative
During the seminar our group mainly discussed about the definitions of quantitative and qualitative researches. It was agreed that quantitative method is based on measurement and data explanation. While qualitative research is more about the content analysis and interpretation of complex description. In the group we assumed that quantitative research will not give the answer why particular phenomena occur but this our preliminary conclusion was denied. Ilias gave a good example. Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality quantitative experiment explained why virtual body causes behavioral changes. As it was explained in the seminar, what kind of method will be applied depends on research fields. There are some topics which require more than logic argumentation of data. Usually, these research objects belong to humanities and social sciences. For instance, if I want to analyze refugees’ language only data how many people speak in how many languages will not give any additional value. And in other way around, if I want to measure sea level changes then quantitative research method would be the main tool. As Ilias said, it is very important to ask the question if the chosen method will let you gain and interpreter interesting results. There is no point to calculate what percentage of homeless people sleep in the station (as it would be doing quantitative research), but it is much more interesting to analyze their behavioral changes and habits (qualitative research).
p.s. I was always wondering how to be sure that you collect enough data to draw statistically significant conclusions. For instance, how many participants have to take part in the experiment? During this week I got the answer. It turned out that there is a special program which will calculate and esteem significantly required number of participants.
Hi! Great reflection, I enjoyed reading it! I agree that the designing of research really is complex, especially questionnaires which seem simple enough to make, but actually require a lot of thought. It's not spoken of that much in papers, and I think that it's easy to lean on a 'genius design', which is that you rely solely on your own experience and opinions. In other words, many researchers might believe in themselves a little too much, and make questionnaires and researching methods without refining them. Your definitions of qualitative and quantitative research, and their differences, seem very legit and easy to understand which is great! The program that calculates how many participants you need sounds quite useful, what was it called?
AtsakytiPanaikintiYes, questionnaires at first look seems a simple method. I did not write down the exact name of the programme which was used in Ilias' experiment, but I found few I think similar programmes:
Panaikintihttps://www.optimizely.com/resources/sample-size-calculator/
http://www.gpower.hhu.de/
You did a really good job in summarizing the week’s topic. It is a good distinction to say that the results of a quantitative method are more based on measured data and that the ones from a qualitative method consists mainly of a content analysis. I guess it really depends on the area of research your study belongs to. Especially in humanistic studies it is difficult to do for example an analysis of a piece of literature. And thanks for sharing the information about the program which can be used to calculate the number of participants. I did not know that something like this exists. But I have to admit that I am skeptical whether it really works well. Maybe it can help you but I doubt that it will always give you an accurate answer.
AtsakytiPanaikinti