Theme 4: Quantitative research - Reflection

At the first seminar we were divided into smaller groups and discussed each other’s papers. We choose to present mine about the effectiveness of SMS for communication with concerns to privacy protection and conflict avoidance. I realized that the method they used had some flaws. Since they went out on the streets of Hong Kong and Shanghai to let people answer their questionnaire, they automatically disqualified parts of the population from being represented in the study e.g. old and disabled people that cant leave their home.

During what time of the day they conducted the survey wasn’t specified in the paper and I think that could be a factor of error since different demographics might be out on the streets at different hours.

At the second seminar Olle Bälter gave a lecture about quantitative vs. qualitative methods and paper vs. online-based questionnaires. Olle has since 2000 researched new methods to collect data for research purposes at Karolinska Institutet. He told us about the studies they perform involving over 500’000 participants and the problems that could arise such as increased costs due to people not answering the questions correctly.

He showed us an example of an online questionnaire from Karolinska Institutet. The questionnaire continuously gave feedback on the answers the volunteer answered e.g. an interactive BMI (Body Mass Index) scale were shown after weight and height had been entered.  Olle said that this kind of feedback would substantially increase the completion rate of the questionnaire. 

On another page the volunteer entered the hours and minutes he spent during a typical day performing different levels of exercise ranging from sleeping (minimal) to road construction work (maximal). Each level of exercise was provided with examples on what kind of exercise they meant e.g. road construction work. Almost every level had one “normal” example and two more unusual such as “sweeping the sidewalk”. There was a good explanation why such examples were given. Sweeping the sidewalk is usually done the same way regardless of who does it. They avoided using examples like cycling since people will have different interpretations on what level of exercise cycling is.  Some might be Tour the France-wannabes and think that cycling is the most extreme form of exercise but some might see it as something you do in a slow pace to get from A to B. 

He showed a questionnaire sent to the staff at KTH which he thought was a bad questionnaire and he pointed out its flaws e.g. there were negations in the questions and the answering scale didn't allow a neutral answer.

What I learned from this was that you really have to be specific and very clear about what you mean and how you phrase the questions since people will interpret the questions based on their own experiences. 

However, the majority of the seminar was spent on a Boggle-like game. We were divided into four groups. Then we were to come up with: first advantages with qualitative methods, then advantages with quantitative methods, paper and online questionnaires. If your group mentioned an acceptable advantage that no other group had written down, your group got a point. There were also some points awarded for “good” argumentation even though the proposed advantage really wasn’t a general advantage at all. I don’t think the Boggle-session gave me any new knowledge but I really enjoyed the discussions we had.