I haven't had the possibility to attend any of this weeks seminars. I think the seminars so far has been valuable to getter a better understanding of each weeks theme so I feel bad about missing them.
However, I've spent more time reading other student blogs this week pick up what I've missed.
In the article I chose where a qualitative research method had been conducted consisted of 21 semi-structured interviews that took approximately 30 minutes each to conduct. From reading other blogs this week it seems like conducting interviews is a popular qualitative research method, especially in social science. My girlfriends is currently doing her bachelor thesis in behavioral science and she's conducting eight interviews and I've learned how time-consuming it is when they have to be transcribed. I think Olle Bälter mentioned that for a professional it takes six hours to transcribe an one hour interview.
I think the researchers purposes would have been benefited if pre-quantitative questionnaire was conducted as well. 21 participants is a bit to few in my opinion to be able make any real generalizations. They also wanted to see if there where any cultural differences by comparing the Americans (n=11) to the Germans (n=10). Each sample group then became even smaller and in my opinion less generalizable. It wasn't the same people conducting the study in both countries which I don't think is a factor for error since they had a script to follow, but some words might have been mistranslated or some words has a different meaning in Germany. But I guess its still better to talk to the students in Germany in real life then having the interviews over the phone.
Next semester I will do my bachelor thesis since I didn't do it last semester. I think this course is a great way to prepare for it since I've learned about different research methods. I've also become better at finding relevant papers and processing its information. So this course has given me new valuable tools to add to my toolbox and a head-start into next semester.
Hi Martin,
SvaraRaderaI definitely wished that I had done as you’ve done – read this course before my Bachelor thesis. The preparation towards relate these different methods, and being aware, but also have a deeper understanding in the different areas as these themes have covered is of great relevance. The ability to find relevant papers through journals was something I now feel I did not have sufficient expertise in while researching for my bachelor thesis. I wish you all the luck with your bachelor thesis!