For this theme, I've read Bälter et al's paper which I (with my current experience) found to be an excellent example of a quantitative research design.
Then I selected and read another research paper, Information sharing on social media sites by Osatuyi, using a quantitative method as well. It was similar in the way that it used
a web questionnaire. Read all about it in the previous post.
After reading these I basically felt that I what I'd learnt was that I need to learn more about research methods and statistics.
During Monday's seminar with Hrastinski we discussed methods used in the selected papers.
Further, all groups made a flow-chart of the method used in the respective paper.
Our group chose Measuring Mobile Phone Use: Self-Report Versus Log Data by Boase and Ling, perhaps because two in the group had read it.
One amusing part was that they had interpreted it differently, which lead to an interesting discussion in the group.
Honestly I think that none of the flowcharts were fantastic. They were either unreadable or a bit confusing.
Still, flowcharts in general are very nice and useful when designing and presenting a process/method. Perhaps we all need to learn more about creating flow-charts for scientific research methods.
Today's seminar (Wednesday) with Olle Bälter was interesting. He arranged a competition style seminar to encourage us to find
advantages/disadvantages with quantitative and qualitative research methods. This was a fun arrangement, and I learnt about the topic even though my team finished last.
The only minor downside of this was that we didn't have time to take complete notes about the advantages/disadvantages.
On the topic of questionnaires, Bälter explained with some good examples what traps one might fall into while designing the questions.
I'll be sure to avoid ambiguous questions and negations when it's time for me to design one.
I understood that it's of great importance to evaluate the questionnaire before "release", or else the questions might be misinterpreted
and answered incorrectly. But what I found most interesting was the fact that successful questionnaires make use of our brains' need for novelty and dopamine reward, explained in another context (of why we tend to over-consume)
by Nate Hagens in the book Fleeing Vesuvius. The example Bälter brought up was a questionnaire that immediately after submitting the answers, presented a result of interesting facts like BMI.
It just makes it more fun and worth wile to answer questions if you get a result in the end. However, as I pointed out in the last post, sometimes rewards seem to have little effect. In the paper by Osatuyi, the students that were
supposed to answer could get extra points towards their grades if the answered, still only 57% answered, so perhaps there has to be a combination of rewards.
Finally, here's an interesting example of an upcoming reward system for answering questionnaires from Google:
Answer surveys to receive play store credit with Google opinion rewards app
Hej Andreas!
SvaraRaderaI enjoyed reading your blog post, especially the part where you mention the different interpretations of the same papers and how you are not satisfied with the flowcharts. I find it intriguing when there are different interpretations of the same paper. As you said, this might lead to interesting discussions and deeper understanding and insights. Or it could lead to further confusion... In any case, it is the discussion that matters.
I also think that the tips on designing questionnaires were worth-mentioned. From my personal experience, designing a questionnaire is a demanding process. After having done some errors, I would have to say it is necessary to test a questionnaire. It might take more time to test it, understand the mistakes and fix them than actually writing down the questions. Sometimes when you work with a questionnaire and trying to formulate questions, you cannot understand if a question is ambiguous. What is easily understandable for you,might not be for others.
Agreed, it's easy to become "home blind" when working with something for a long period. Thus one becomes too familiar to recognize the duality in the questions made for a survey regarding the matter. So, we see here that there's a great need for testing the tool before using it.
RaderaYou write that you didn't find any of the flowcharts very useful and that "they were either unreadable or a bit confusing". I totally agree with you on this point, since I also had some problem in understanding these "flowcharts".
SvaraRaderaThe problems is that (in my current understanding) they are not flowcharts, they are relation charts. I.e. how does the different variables in the research relate to each other? For example, the chart on study behaviour (https://www.kth.se/social/upload/529c40c5f2765427dc44ec15/Bild%202013-12-02%20kl.%2009.08_large.png) does not explain the flow of the method, it explains how the study behaviour can be classified into different types of disruptions, that in the research correlated with study results.
Do you agree? At least most of them makes more sense if you look at them as relationcharts.
Hi. Yes, you might be right, even though a relation-chart can be made using the same tools and is similar to a flow-chart. I think that we would gain from learning to use this type of tool for our future research.
RaderaHej Andreas! Your last point about the reward system was pretty interesting. I'm also wondering why it worked so well in Bälter's survey while in your example, the effect wasn't that great as expected. I can just assume that it is more likely to be dependent on a particular topic when the reward is not "high" enough. For example, I think that most people are interested in their health, so they might have thought that they gain a better knowledge and understanding about their actual state of health when answering the survey. Grades are of course important but not as important as your own physical condition. But then I think that everything changes when you bring money into play. I'm pretty sure that more students would have answered if they got a little raise of their monthly student budget. What do you think?
SvaraRaderaI think it has to do with immediate reward. If we know that we'll be immediately rewarded, it's easier to be lured into answering the questions. You have a good point with the "grade of reward" thing. Of course as you say, if the reward instead would be money, that would probably trigger some kind of expectation of reward and more people would participate, but just a few extra points to the grade doesn't seem to do the trick.
Radera