Final blog post

Finally, you should compile all your comments to other blog postings throughout the course in a final blog post; to which you should write a 1000 word commentary in which you reflect about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions.

When I started this course I didn’t expect it to be so philosophical and content-wise historic as it was in the beginning. But after the first three themes, it started to make sense. Each and every lecture had it’s own function, a small part to the puzzle that resulted in the end in a complex structure of possibilities of research methods. All together, they combined different aspects of research and empiricism and gave me a broad knowledge of various methods and theories.
What I liked the most was for one the weekly discussions, which offered the opportunity to exchange opinions on the topics, as well as to hear other points of views on the same theme, but also whenever I had the chance to pick a journal article myself. This gave me the chance to actively seek a topic I am interested in and to discuss what methods the paper uses and what the advantages or disadvantages are.

We started with discussing Kant and Plato, including the a priori and a posteriori concepts. At first, this didn’t seem so relevant- until I discovered that a priori knowledge is tied to rationalism and a posteriori knowledge is tied to empiricism. This is extremely important when it comes to answer research questions: You start with finding hypotheses through deduction, which is somewhat an a priori knowledge, and then you can develop theories and test your assumption through a posteriori knowledge. When we discussed Adorno & Horkheimer and Walter Benjamin I realized how little attention I had paid to the historical context of journal articles of books so far – It was shocking to see how much I missed out on, every detail being so meaningful, just because I chose to ignore the historical setting. The following theme was all about theory. Even though I thought I knew a lot about theories (especially media theories), it was very interesting to hear from other students, what they know and have learned so far about theories. The most significant point we discussed was probably, when a theory is accepted to be a theory. Can you prove that this theory is unconditionally right? No. So how do you then prove that it’s useful? Here, I stick to what I also have learned in my Bachelor’s degree.  You cannot verify theories truly, but you can consider them as true instead, or plainly “widely accepted”. Next we talked about the most known methods in scientific research: the quantitative and qualitative methods. While I had seminars on both types during my Bacherlor’s degree, I am more confident working within the quantitative methods. First of all, I have more knowledge on statistical analysis than on conversation analysis (e.g.) and second of all, I had to conduct my very own study during my Bachelor thesis and learned a lot during these weeks. When we talked about the prototypes I was temporarily lost, since I have never heard about this in this detailed way. But now I’m sure, that they are shaped by research to gain new knowledge and can bring abstract ideas to a concrete level. Therefore I can imagine doing a study involving prototypes one day.
I was intrigued by Haibo Li’s lecture and his approach on ideas. I have never thought about ideas in this way, but now it all makes sense: To take a step back, to refocus the question in order to change our lense and to find new problems within questions.

Another method that I didn’t know of before was the case study research method.
It astonished me that a case study doesn’t have hypotheses (due to lack of knowledge), since hypotheses and theory are two components that always seemed to be present when we talked about methods.

So how can different methods be combined in order to answer complex research questions? If you choose to use several methods, you can definitely reduce measurement bias. A good example is the problem of social desirability. Certain topics are simply making people uncomfortable. It may be a topic including questions about sex, drugs or other sensible issues. It is well known, that these topics are difficult to research. Therefore a combination of different methods is used to get closer to an answer, that’s reliable. First of all a questionnaire within a quantitative method is used to gather broad knowledge about the topic. Then, an observational research method might be used to even out the issues at hand. This allows a researcher to get a more complete view on the problem stated, since more information can be collected from various directions.

I general it is a great idea to start with a large-scale quantitative method survey and to gain lots of responses on a certain topic. After that, statistical test can be conducted and results reported. But then it might be a good idea to take the insights you have gained and to use these in a more in-depth qualitative interview with fewer participants.

Another way is to start with a case study, which is very broad and might lead anywhere (anything goes!) and take the results and use these within a quantitative or qualitative more general study. It’s of course also possible to have a few interviews on a new topic, and then to generate more answers through big surveys on the Internet (e.g.). This is a great example for usability testing, since a few testers can point out bigger mistakes and confusing issues at first. After that a larger batch of participants can analyze the app or website afterwards.

In summary there are various ways how different methods can be combined and used to research a topic. A combination of various methods is always beneficial, since it offers more details than a single research method would have found on its own. This course “Theory and Method in Media Technology” has offered me detailed insights on various possibilities, which I will keep in mind the next time I have to conduct my own study.

Sources

Fast Company. (2015). Three ways to reframe a problem to find an innovative solution.

Brosius, H., Koschel, F., Haas, A. (2007). Methoden der empirischen Kommunikationsforschung. Wiesbaden: Verlag für Soziawissenschaften. 

Keuth, H. (2004). The philosophy of Karl Popper. Cambridge: University Press. 

Weick, E. K. (1995). What theory is not, theorizing is. Administrative Science Quartely. 40 (3). 385-390.

Kant, I. (1787/1997). Critique of Pure Reason, (P. Guyer and A. Wood, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge    University Press.