Reflection 4: Quantitative research

This week’s theme on quantitative methods made me reflect on how a quantitative research paper is structured and how to choose the most accurate method for the research your doing.

The seminars helped us to better understand the structure and the importance of different methods. The first seminar on Monday was focused on the quantitative method, where we got the chance to discuses our papers in smaller groups. Everyone told about the method that was used in their paper. Online surveys in form of questionnaires were used in every paper, which was really interesting to see. We also discussed about the different factors of the result and the correlation between them. Later we did a flow chart of the method we choose in our group.

The second seminar on Wednesday with Olle Bälter, were both about quantitative- and qualitative methods. The main focus here was to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of respective method. I usually don’t pay so much attention on the disadvantages of the methods but saw how important it can be.  A more accurate and suitable method can be chosen, by knowing the advantages and disadvantages of the method. Another interesting thing that Bälter discussed was the structure of questionnaires. He told that you could make different mistakes when designing a questionnaire. One difficult point was that a question could be interpreted in different ways, so it is important to have more distinct questions. Also if you are going to do an online survey, it is always good to test it before you send it out to avoid technical problems.

I’ve always been in contact with different forms of quantitative and qualitative methods, through my school years. I thought that I had a good knowledge about the methods but was positively surprised on how much deeper understanding I got through the course. I believe that this knowledge will help me on my future studies to write a more academic paper.