In the lecture, we discussed the research report "Drumming in Immersive Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play". Ilias Bergström explained that he and his research group had only wanted to create an existence proof with this experiment. That was very eye-opening to me, because I had previously objected that the group of participants might not have been too representative (I have also discussed this in my blog post). A further research could now be how different groups act in the experiment. I personally would, for example, be interested in seeing how an entirely African experimental group takes body ownership of the "formally light-skinned body". Also the NEO FFI personality test triggered my interest, in case anybody else is interested in that one, here is an online version: NEO FFI Test online.
During the seminar, we split up into small groups as usually. In our group, we quickly agreed on how we see quantitative and qualitative research and how both of them can be used effectively. We then started talking about our own previous experiences with either one of them and discussed our bachelor's theses. In my thesis, I did qualitative interviews with experts, but I have also conducted many quantitative studies for other research papers before that. We then took up the question of how quantitative and qualitative research differ in the big seminar group. I answered that it depends on the research question - for broad research questions, qualitative research is the best alternative, whereas quantitative research is suitable for narrower research questions that can easily be answered with a set of given answers in a questionnaire, for example.
I also felt that I did not get much new information about quantitative and qualitative research, but as Ilias pointed out during the seminar you cannot take for granted that all of us know so much about it. That is always a little bit eye-opening for me, because in my opinion everybody needed to write a bachelor thesis and should have used those methods or at least discussed them before. I agree that further research concerning the paper about virtual reality would be very interesting. We've been in the same small group during the seminar and I really enjoyed our discussion about our different bachelor thesis topics and which what methods everyone of us got to their results.
SvaraRaderaHi! I enjoyed reading your post and thank you for the link. I also think that it's impossible to prove that qualitative methods are more effective than quantitative or vice versa, it depends on subject of study. I would say that quantitative methods allow to get more general result while qualitative method allow to investigate subject of study deeper. I agree with your point that from pre-lecture post that online survey is a very efficient method in terms of scalability. New technologies have great impact on research methods development and allow to get more accurate results as now we can handle large data.
SvaraRaderaHi,
SvaraRaderaI also found the lecture on "Drumming in Immersive Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play" interesting. I think that you have pointed out an interesting aspect of the paper when discussing the participants and how representative they are. I think that your suggestion for further research have an interesting perspective on how not only methods and data are important for the generalisation of an experiment, yet also the participants. I had not taken this perspective in to consideration when reading the paper at first and therefore I found this interesting to read.
Great reflection with good explanations of your thoughts and what you have learnt for this theme!
I agree that quantitative and qualitative research was quite a familiar subject even before we had it in this course. Realizing that research is not about finding definite proof but more about finding the existence of such an event was interesting.
SvaraRaderaYou captured more or less all of the things I also found! That NEO FFI personality test was also interesting!
Hello Malina !
SvaraRaderaThat's interesting, it seems a lot of people have worked on quantitative/qualitative research for their bachelor's thesis, as I have read a lot of blog posts where it was mentioned !
Anyway, I like how precise you've been in your blog post, it was very insightful and interesting to read.
One thing I'm not sure about however is your conclusion about the choice for qualitative/quantitative research. When you say "broad research questions" and "narrower research questions", I'm not sure what you refer to in terms of size? What are you qualifying as "broad" or "narrow"?
I agree that quantitative study has to be applied to a a sample that's reasonably sized, whereas qualitative can be used for smaller samples, as they go deeper in knowledge. But I don't know if the line can be drawn that directly and distinctly. Somehow to me it seems that choosing what type of study isn't something you can do following some type of rule, it depends on the way you're conducting your study and sometimes it can change as you go… But that's only an idea I'm not sure about !
Thanks for your insightful and thought provoking blog post !
I didn’t care much for the “drummer” paper prior the seminar or lecture but must say that I was intrigued when the paper was presented during the lecture. I believe that in most cases there is no work around to not use both qualitative and quantitative data. Those methods are strong major methods when combined with the other minor method, then if the major should be Qual. or Quant. I guess you need to figure out for each individual research.
SvaraRadera