Theme 4: Quantitative Research (before)

1. Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
My chosen paper was published in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (volume 20) and is called "Professional Personae - How Organizational Identification Shapes Online Identity in the Workplace", written by Christian Fieseler, Miriam Meckel and Giulina Ranzini. By the use of an Internet-based survey they collected 1862 questionnaires and were able to use 679 complete and correct filled in ones for continuing analysis. The 17 000 potential interviewees were contacted electronically and had time to fill out the survey within four weeks. Fieseler, Meckel and Ranzini focused on communication and marketing professionals who use digital and social media at work for job-related reasons. The biggest benefit of an Internet-based survey is that you can reach a big group of people and you do not need so much resources for it. The problem of an Internet-based surveys is that lots of people do not show interest and do not take part, so you need to have a very big database to reach enough people. Also you cannot control the answering-process of the participants, e.g. when more than one person answers questions in a questionnaire.

2. What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
When using quantitative methods you always have to be careful and really think your survey trough. Having a good sample and a high return rate is one big part of a survey but you need more to get results out of it. Designing and using a good analysis method is important to get results. Therefore combining different methods and strategies is often useful, because a method does not always cover all the necessary points. The paper shows how much effort you need to put into designing an online-questionnaire and how careful you need to be when analyzing the results. Just because participants answer a questionnaire does not mean that they answered all the questions totally honest. You always have to consider the personal situation of the person but also the situation of the interview. If somebody is in a hurry he or she would probably answer in a different way that he or she would when answering in a quiet moment.

3. Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
The main methodological problem of the study is that an online-questionnaire can only capture a snap-shot of how the participants think and feel. When using an Internet-based survey you cannot control the environment where the participants answer the questionnaire. That could affect the way they answer it, as I already explained above. Another problem is that you only get the opinion from people who want to participate in the survey and you also do not get the reasons why many other people do not participate.

The most important key point in the paper "Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play" written by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergström and Mel Slater is "Immersive Virtual Reality". It means to transport people to a virtual place giving them the illusion that they are somebody else and trough that they loose the perception of their own body. In this paper the participants play drums and instead of seeing their own hands, they see the hands of a Caucasian formally dressed male or a dark-skinned casually dressed male. The aim of the paper was to find out if a virtual body ownership illusion can affect the perception and the behavior of the participants. It shows that virtual body ownership illusion could influence the behavior.

4. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?
Quantitative methods are high standardized, which is on the one hand good for the work flow and the realization, but on the other hand results trough quantitative methods are more superficial. By the use of standardized techniques some details would not be able to collect. But quantitative methods allow a more structured and clear interpretation, because of all the statistics and data you get out of it.

5. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?
Compared to quantitative methods the use of qualitative methods offer a wider range of getting detailed and in-deep information about a case. Qualitative methods allow a more flexible process when collecting data from participants. Therefore it is harder to analyze qualitative data because of the wide range of information you get.