Theme 4: post-reflection

I didn’t feel like I got as much out of this weeks studies as I did from the previous weeks’. We got to read examples of papers written on quantitative studies, but I missed a thorough theoretical explanation for what makes a method essentially quantitative versus qualitative. Since it’s presented as kind of a dichotomy, it shouldn’t be impossible to draw up some dividing lines that you can refer to when thinking about instances of research methods being used.

The theme for this week did lead to some interesting discussions though; I greatly appreciated the seminar that Olle Bälter held. Also, it got me into interesting discussions outside of school, with a friend who studies statistics, about quantitative/qualitative methods versus quantitative/qualitative data, and how they combine and possibly don’t combine. It’s easy to get comfortable and blind to the bigger picture when handling data.

After having read the paper by Bälter et. al., the seminar with Olle turned out to be the most interesting part of this theme by far. I picked up many new ideas about surveys, how people behave and how to handle information. It was a refershing experience in an area that otherwise feels a bit dogmatic to have someone point out a lot of good methods that aren’t actually being used on a wide scale. Overall I think I’m left with the insight that I personally find it much more interesting to think about how to design a good study in a specific scenario than to actually carry it out.