Theme 4: Reflection

This week’s theme was Quantitative Research, which is actually a subject that I (and many of my classmates) have already brushed upon while writing for the bachelor degree and also during the course Media, Technology and Culture. For me this theme served more as a reminder of what quantitative methods are and why and to what cause they can be used. But, apart from for a reminder, this week’s theme also gave at least some deeper insight into quantitative methods, and perhaps mainly produced a sharper definition as to where the quantitative and qualitative methods differ from each other.

During Wednesday’s seminar we played “Boggle” - or at least a variation of it; instead of creating words we listed definitions of the two different research methods. I personally thought the seminar was a very constructive way of learning, and it really suited this kind of subject. Discussions were raised and we had a knowledgeable judge to end them. The only troublesome part, according to me, is that competitiveness can cause bickering and excessively prolong the discussions.

Just like last week’s theme we chose an article for this theme, with the exception that the main criteria of this chosen article was that it had make use of quantitative methods in its research. The article I ended up choosing used pretty much the same research method as the article we were supplied with. Both of them used surveys (both with a rather substantial amount of test subjects) to draw data upon and then predicted and generalized to makes some conclusions from their research. In the end the conclusion are therefore only predictions and generalizations, and they never explain why and how the conclusions really came to be, only that they do. If there’s something this course has taught me, it is that research will never be exact or definite. Perhaps one can evolve a study that’s using quantitative research methods, by the use of qualitative methods (or vice versa or even further use of the same method), and provide deeper insights and therefore further defining the theory. But, however far one evolves the theory, it will not provide a definite truth. So what then is the point of research? Well, perhaps one could accept that the definite truth may not be within human grasp, and hope that the research at least touches parts of the truth and is still beneficial.