I chose the article Making sense of
multitasking: The role of Facebook, by Terry Judd (2013) and it was published
in the journal Computers & Education
with an Impact Factor of 2.775. The article investigates the impact Facebook
has on university students’ general behavior when it comes to multitasking and focused
behavior. They hypothesize that Facebook is associated with an increased occurrence
of multitasking, that it initiates and maintains multitasking behavior, and
that Facebook users are generally more likely to multitask.
The quantitative methods of Making sense of multitasking: The role of Facebook
I believe the article make use of pretty much straightforward quantitative
methods for its study. The study takes place at an Australian university where it
collects detailed data-logs of students’ computer-based activities in an
open-access computer laboratory. They then separate the different activities
performed, give them task names (i.e. Facebook, Google search, Microsoft Word,
etc.) and count how many tasks were performed at the same time and how often the
subject was switching task, during a session and during segments with specific
time intervals. Depending on the count, the study defines the session as
focused, sequential or multitasking. Over all the study makes use of 3372
collected sessions from 1249 different students.
Since the study did use a fairly large group of people and many recorded
many sessions that were quite accurate, it could obtain solid results, where the
evidence supporting the three hypotheses in general was reasonably strong. The
method is efficient – data was collected rather smoothly and results were
easily processed and gave clear results.
There are however limitations to the method. The results only represent the
data collected from students at a certain university, in a certain country,
during a certain time, etc. The study does not represent the whole world, or
even every computer/Facebook user. There is also no exact definition as to what
is considered to be multitasking, which in a sense makes the results vague. This
type of method is also making predictions – it does not explain why or how Facebook
would induce multitasking, it only suggests that it does. Perhaps with the use
of more intricate interviews with the subjects, or another form of qualitative data
gathering, the study could render a deeper understanding of the subject.
The quantitative methods of Physical activity, stress, and
self-reported upper respiratory tract infection
The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship that exists
between physical activity, stress and self-reported upper respiratory tract
infection (URTI). The study examines this relationship by Web-based questionnaires
to assess disease status, general lifestyle, physical activity and perceived levels
of stress of 1509 Swedish men and women that had reported URTI. The conclusions
they could make from the study was that high levels of physical activity might
reduce the risk of URTI, and that highly stressed people may benefit even more
from the physical activity.
Which are the
benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
As mentioned above, when analyzing the method of the previous
paper (which is somewhat similar in its methods), quantitative methods can be
very efficient when gathering data, analyzing it and processing the results. In
general the quantitative methods offer a way to gather and process a larger quantity
of data. However, the data gathered will not necessarily provide significantly
deep insights into how and why a phenomenon occurs. The quantitative methods
are generally used in the social sciences, and generally make use of
statistics.
Which are the
benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
As opposed to the quantitative methods, the
qualitative methods will provide deeper insight – they examine how and why the phenomena
occur. The quantitative methods can consist of interviews, historical research
and such. It can also provide an understanding of the conclusions made by the
quantitative methods.
Qualitative research is however limited in the sense
that it might be harder to analyze the data, detect the necessary patterns or
extrude the significance for the study in question. When using qualitative
methods it is also generally harder to obtain large amounts of data. The method
might, for instance, be more time-consuming, harder to preform or harder to generalize
to fit the circumstances.
Hey.
SvaraRaderaInteresting choice of paper. I think many computer users multitask, that's usually the case. You argued that they didn't explain though why or how Facebook would induce multitasking. I agree that there should be an explanation to his suggestion. But I think the authors might have thought that's the case because of the reason that people on Facebook link stuff to each other, chat, message and comment. So kind of naturally it would induce multitasking? Clicking on the links brings you to that website and while messaging or commenting, you may go do something else while waiting for a reply. I think that's the case for pretty much every social platform and not exclusively only on Facebook? That'd be my guess. However as you wrote, the authors would be able to support their suggestion with qualitative data gathering, which they could have done after the students' computer tasks.
Hello Johan!
SvaraRaderaWell written post, but I do however have some questions. You talk about the limitations of quantitative data, both because they only include one single university in one country and that they don't go deep enough in their research. This is valid concerns and I agree with you. But when is it satisfying to just have the quantitative data? Shouldn't all papers strive to get more depth?