Theme 4: Quantitative research, post 1

From the paper Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality I was impressed with how much detail was put into describing the method, and got a better understanding of how specific you actually have to be. The paper is examining how the body ownership illusion works in an immersive virtual reality, and I though the paper was interesting and it's an interesting field  with a lot of opportunity. It would have been interesting to not only use caucasian people for the research, but expand the ethnicity and analyze the differences. Only using Caucasians would become a limitation as the results then can only be applied to Caucasian people and isn't representative of more people. 

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

The benefits of using quantitative methods are that you get data in form of numbers, you can make statistical tests, and statistical analysis provides us with important facts, such as differences between groups, preference trends, and demographics.

One of the biggest benefits of using quantitative research is that quantitative studies provide data that is descriptive, for example it can show us how many percentage of people use a specific app. However, the difficulties are when it comes to the interpretation of the data. It’s difficult getting in all the variables in a survey, and it can be hard for participants to answer questions correctly. It’s also hard to know why people answer the way they did, and it’s easy for quantitative research to overlook important information. 

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Qualitative studies describe the characteristics or qualities of something, and these descriptions can’t very easily be reduced to numbers. Qualitative research can provide you with details about emotion, human behavior, and personality characteristics. It includes information about for example user needs, routines, and behaviors.

A qualitative method requires more flexibility, and it allows the researcher to respond to the data throughout. While quantitative research a lot of the time takes the form of a survey, qualitative research is usually done via natural observation or interviews. It gives the researcher more room to ask follow-up questions, to get a deeper understanding from the participants, and via interviews and talking to people, it gives less room for misunderstandings and misinterpretations.  

Qualitative research is a lot more time consuming than quantitative research, as you can’t automate it in the same way. This can be quite a limitation as you often only have a specific time frame for the research, this also gives qualitative research less of statistical power, as fewer people participated in the study, when it comes to verifying trends.

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

I chose the paper Did fact checking matter in the 2012 presidential campaign? Published in Sage Publications in 2013. The evidence provided in the paper comes from a survey done by Annenberg Public Policy Center. The paper presents the results of a survey done in five different waves, during the campaigns, after the debates, and immediately after the election. Adults, 18 years or older, were chosen by random-digit-dialing of landlines and cell phones. The participants were asked a series of knowledge questions about background facts and the candidates stands on issues – all questions discussed by at least four of the major national fact-checking organizations.

As this survey took place over the phone, an obvious limitation would be that it’s not always easy to hear what the other person is saying, the participant could be busy or distracted and not paying attention or answering in a committed way. There’s also no way of knowing if the participant is looking up answers to the questions online while on the phone. By using a survey and not in depth interviews, you only get limited answers and important factors could be left out. In this example, even if the participant didn’t go to a fact-checking site, the person could have used other resources etc.    

The benefit is that you can get answers from a lot more people doing interviews over the phone than doing them in person. It’s quicker to call, people have the freedom of answering the survey while at home or finishing tasks, if you’d want the calls could be recorded to then be transcribed later, and by using a survey it will be quicker and easier to analyze the results.

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

During my bachelors I mainly used qualitative methods, so reading quantitative ones was quite new. During this weeks theme I learned more about the different quantitative methods, and from reading the paper I learned different ways of analyzing results, execute studies, and reading result tables.

From the actual paper I learned about fact-checking during the 2012 presidential campaign in the US, a theme I found very interesting and have been reading up about even before. It goes a little hand in hand with the paper I chose for last weeks theme, and it’s something I find incredibly interesting and important.

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

The survey was done on five different occasions, and each time between 1200 and 1500 people were interviewed. In a country as large as America, I don’t see that number being very representative, I would have liked to see more people participate, and a clearer description of who was being interviewed. In the survey random people were selected, I would have preferred to have different groups interviewed to then analyze the result. 1200 people randomly selected doesn’t say much, I would have improved the method by choosing for example 1000 women, 1000 men, education level, job, etc. to then see if there’s a difference. The survey did break down these different categories during analyzes, however, there still wasn’t that many people participating in the interviews.

I would personally have liked to read more about which questions were asked, and have some more focus on the ones who didn’t visit a fact-checking site. The paper concluded that those who did were more educated, had more political knowledge, and new more about the candidates etc. but I would have liked the authors to specify more, did fact-checking affect when voting? Did fact-checking affect how they felt about the candidates? And being use to going to fact-checking sites affect how they read media or campaign material?