Theme 4: Quantitative Methods (Reflection)

For this week's topic I read the paper "Social networking site or social surveillance site? Understanding the use of interpersonal electronic surveillance in romantic relationships." by Robert Tokunaga (2011) from the journal Computers in Human Behavior. I also reviewed again "Methods in empirical research of communication" (in German: Methoden der empirischen Kommunikationsforschung) by Brosius, Koschel & Haas (2007), which I read for my bachelor studies. This book sums up all important key concepts of quantitative and qualitative methods, as well as possible methods like interviews, empirical observation and experiments. 

I contributed to the seminar by actively discussing the pro's and con's of quantitative/ qualitative methods, when it's the smartest to use what, about the possibility to use both and through discussing examples from my personal friends, who have researched for example WhatsApp communication with a qualitative method, whereas I researched it through a quantitative approach. 

In the lecture we discussed different approaches, as in surveys, experiments etc. In my bachelor thesis I had to formulate a questionnaire myself, so this was nothing new, but still interesting. As Ilias said, I also had to validate my questionnaire. I tested and piloted it through asking participants if there needs to be any clarification, if the layout was okay and how long it took to answer the questions.  

After that we talked more about the body ownership illusion experiment done by Ilias Bergström and fellow researchers. It's always interesting to hear about the process from the researcher himself, rather than only reading the journal article. 

In the seminar we talked about pro's and con's of qualitative and quantitative methods. It's important to note, that quantitative research is not better than qualitative research, only because it involves statistics. It's also not true, that qualitative research is more subjective than quantitative research. 

Whatever method used, researches try to keep their objectiveness. One example is conversation analysis, where conversations are transcribed and then interpreted. Here it is very common to hire people to transcribe the conversations independently from each other, so one can compare the transcriptions and ensure that there will be no subjectiveness.  

Since I already have worked within empirical research during my bachelor thesis, I have some insights on what quantitative methods are about and what's important. Still, it was nice to hear from other students, who possibly have studied something else, what they have done so far in research and what they find interesting within this. Someone pointed out, that they were interested in the perceived use vs. the actual use of media. Of course here we have again the problem of subjectiveness vs. objectiveness. If you ask a person how often they check their phone they might say 3 x an hour. If you then measure how often they really check their phone per hour, you might find out, that the actual amount of checking is 25 x an hour. 

This week was overall very interesting, especially because we are all from different disciplines and have different knowledge that we could bring together. 

Sources

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

Kilteni, K., Bergström, I., Slater, M. (2012). Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 19 (4), 597-605 http://doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/TVCG.2013.29

Tokunaga, R. S. (2011). Social networking site or social surveillance site? Understanding the use of interpersonal electronic surveillance in romantic relationships. Computers in Human Behavior, 27, 705–713. doi:10.1016/j.chb.2010.08.014