in the seminar we discuss mainly on the characteristic of quantitative and qualitative research and their limitations.
i have to confess that it is sometimes boring to me because i already had all these from the bachelor courses. But what interesting to me is to hear about various topic of the paper other people had read.
Ilias mentioned one of his friends who were doing the research about homeless people in London. he could have just go do an interview of how the homeless live, what they do in a day. but what he did is going there spent nights and days with them and talk to them and it is how he conduct his Qualitative research.
Qualitative is more like a data driven analysis. in one way you can plan them but what you have got after doing the research might be out of plan. Quantitative is more of the controllable process of research.
however i see that it really depends on what context your research is about. like Ilias's reason of choosing quantitive way of collecting data of drumming research. because what they want to know people's subconscious, therefore they cannot just interview participants and let them answer consciously.
however, i had an experience of doing the qualitative research at my workplace before where i have to secretly watching the interviewer interviewed people who use our company products. people might be complimenting or swearing in an interesting aspect but after the qualitative research we had to do the quantitative after. we handed out survey and later analyse the result. we need numbers to present/convey board of management sometimes because they likes numbers and trust number more. however, quantitive and qualitative kind of had complete each other in a way.
Hi! For me seminar was also quite boring for me as I already know about qualitative and quantitative methods. Survey about homeless people that you mentioned sounds very interesting. In my opinion qualitative methods allows to analyze subject of survey deeper and probably they more suitable for narrow subjects. I agree with your point that qualitative and quantitative methods generally complete each other.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with you that this week’s theme was nothing new to most of us. I also agree that quantitive research could be more straightforward. The results could be quite out of the researcher’s expectation/hypothesis but compared to qualitative methods, as you also mentioned, have more of predictable process. However, I am not sure if , as you say, “qualitative is more like a data driven analysis.”
ReplyDeleteAs you mention also, I agree that our research method is context-dependent. That is, the nature of one’s research determines the method the fits the best with that specific research project. It worth mentioning that sometimes a combo of methods could yield the best result.
It is very interesting that you talk about your own experience of qualitative research at work. And what you talked about is absolutely a interning personal account to stress the importance of combine both methods.
I liked reading your text, a well written and smooth text to follow.
Hello! Yeah, I was also thinking that this theme was a little more obvious than the previous ones, but I agree that it was interesting to analyze it a bit more, and also to read articles where this method is used in different ways. I like what you said about people answering subconsciously, as I think that's very true since people might feel like they have more time formulating an answer when doing a questionnaire, as opposed to an interview. I hadn't really thought about it exactly like that before! Your workplace sounds very interesting, would you say that it's better to use qualitative methods BEFORE quantitative? I've always kind of gone for the opposite, that is quantitative research to gain a general understanding, and then qualitative to zoom in on the specifics.
ReplyDeletecompletely agree with you on the advantages and disadvantages of qualitative and quantitative methods. You have worked out well the strengths and drawbacks of both in comparison to each other. Unfortunately, Ilias did not talk about the research with homeless people in our seminar. I think it is a great example to understand when it is really suitable to use qualitative methods. Everyone can imagine that maybe a researcher who has never been homeless would not even be able to develop a questionnaire which would ask the right questions about live as a homeless persons. There might be so many aspects of their live that can only be covered by an open structured interview.
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ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteThe study of Ilias about homeless people in London is so interesting. Thank you for sharing, since this example had not come up in our seminar. I agree with you that qualitative and quantitative research complete each other. The method that we can use to gather data for our study depend on the field and the subject of the research. When we use one method the context that we examine is reducing. As a result, if we choose the wrong method or we do not combine both of them, it’s possible to lose the main reason of our study. Based to that we cannot compare and decide which method is the best without having a context to apply them.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI agree on what you wrote about feeling that you didn't get as much out of this theme because of already having worked with these methods. I think that the thing about getting a result that is out of plan is the advantages with qualitative methods. They open up to new perspective and inputs that the researcher had not taken into consideration. And also allows us to dig deeper when conducting the research on participants.
Interesting and fun to know about your company trusting numbers more than qualitative results. I had not really thought of it being liked that. Did you feel that the complementing quantitative method was unnecessary for the research but only needed for the company?
Hi
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to know the role of quantitative and qualitative methods in your way.But I'm not sure about the data driven analysis you mentioned.In my opinion,qualitative method is more like a direction or analysis in the certain context.quantitaive method might be data-based
as the means to support and reveal the new knowledge.As you said,they should be complementary in some way.Thanks for sharing
Hey!
ReplyDeleteSorry to hear you have to do similar course to the one you already had one your during you bachelor studies. But I'm glad you still find something interesting in it.
I like how you say that quantitative research is more controllable compared to qualitative and that the data from qualitative research could be something you don't expect. I think that this is not a bad thing and that gathering unexpected data can help you to steer your research in a more constructive direction. Quantitative data sometimes seems a bit limiting.
Your confession wins a lot support as we shared similar thoughts on that. Thank you for speaking it out.
ReplyDeleteI like the way you present your idea with examples as well as your example itself is very interesting. I think in many cases neither quantitative nor qualitative research alone is enough, but a combination is needed in fact. As you said, quantitative and qualitative analysis is able to complete each other in a way. This is a very insightful conclusion. Good Job!
Thanks for sharing your insightful thoughts.
Hi,
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading your reflection a lot.It is interesting that we could use a totally different way to conduct our experiment,just like what Ilias's friends did.If you spent long time with the homeless people,you will learn more information than just doing a questionnaire. Also,thanks for teaching me "data driven analysis".From your essay I knew that what we got from the plan may be out of our imagination.I agree with you that we should choose different methods in different fields.
Keep it up!