Theme 4: Quantitative Research

Before theme 4 started, we were to read the article:

• Fondell, E., Lagerros, Y. T., Sundberg, C. J., Lekander, M., Bälter, O., Rothman, K., & Bälter, K. (2010). Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection.Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(2), 272-279.

It discusses and analyses the relationships between physical activity, stress and URTI. I enjoyed the article because of the timing. Autumn is just arriving and it’s cold outside. I had a cold just the other week so the timing of the article was good. I also got better insight on papers based on quantitative methods.

We were also to read a paper of our own and answer some questions. I chose to read the article: ‘Interactive Features of Online Newspapers: Identifying Patterns and Predicting Use of Engaged Readers’ (2008), which was published in Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (impact factor: 2.019). The author of the paper is Deborah S. Chung, University of Kentucky, Lexington, USA.

The aims of the article were to identify:

1. Categories of interactivity promoted through different interactive features
2. Patterns of online news reader’s uses of interactive features
3. factors that predict the use of different types of interactive features 

I enjoyed reading the article even though it was very focused on giving quantitative data and correlations. Thus, this is good regarding this week’s theme, but I do think it was a bit too much sometimes. What I’ve learnt from the article is that it isn’t that important for newspapers to have all these new and exceptional interactive features. According to the paper is the market apparently not ready for it. In my opinion I would like to add “the market is not ready, just yet”. The four categories of interactive features presented by the article were:

• human/medium interactive features (e.g. “submit photos/stories” and letter-to-editor)
• medium/human interactive features (e.g. customized weather/topics and search feature)
• human interactive features (e.g. message boards, Q&A and chat functions)
• medium interactive features (e.g. audio files and video files)

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The paper used an online-based web-survey. The benefits of this method is that you can receive more responses than if you’re using for instance a telephone-based interview. The limitations on the contrary is that you don’t get as detailed answers as compared to telephone interviews. I would for this paper perhaps tip Chung off to start out with a web-survey and then ask some of the respondents to participate in a focus group session. In this way Chang would in addition to her quantitative responses also deepen her result with more qualitative data.

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
The most interesting with the methods in this paper was how few of the readers actually answered the survey. Despite the method being a rather simple web-survey and despite the chance of perhaps winning a prize, out of over 40 000 readers Chang “only” received 542 verified respondents. I also learnt the importance of being well-prepared when constructing surveys. Chang included a variety of theories and models in order to receive as “good” (effective) responses as possible, with great result I think.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

This is kind of similar to my response in the previous question but I guess Chang could have done follow-up surveys  or focus groups as well. Perhaps to analyse the changes over time and make sure to get what respondents really think. Sometimes when you fill in surveys you go through it very fast and don’t really think before you answer. I think a couple of follow-up web-surveys with similar question or discussions from focus groups would strengthen the conclusions Chang draws.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

I think I have answered this further up but I think you lose some depth to the investigation if you only ask quantitative questions. I think a combination of quantitative and qualitative would gather a more valuable result. This of course depends on what result you’re seeking, but I’m thinking in general that this would result in a better investigation. The upside of using quantitative methods is that you can gather a lot of responses since it’s very general questions and time efficient.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

See questions above. In short: time consuming and it’s hard to prove your result in numbers. When having a quantitative survey you can write that 7 out of 10 likes cheeseburgers over hamburgers. This is difficult to do ‘a priori’ in a qualitative survey. The benefits are like I wrote above that you’ll have more detailed answers to your questions.