Theme 4 - Quantitative research (part 1)

Part 1:

Paper: “Facebook and texting made me do it: Media-induced task-switching 

while studying”, by Larry D. Rosen, L. Mark Carrier, Nancy A. Cheever 

California State University, Dominguez Hills, United States 

Journal: Computers in Human Behavior 29 (2013) 948–958 

Impact factor: 2.067 

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods? 

The paper was an observational study of studying behavior. The methods used were observation and interviews. The observations were conducted by student observers and the survey-type interview was performed after the minute-by-minute observation was completed. The benefit of using student observers and a standardized survey is that it is quantifiable. The process of finding new participants by letting students ask their friends also simplifies reaching out to larger quantity of test subjects. The limitation of these methods is that they may cause an unbalanced test group. The observation performed by counting the number of windows (tabs?) open on the computer might also leave inaccurate results as this may not be a proof of actual multi-tasking. Multiple windows or tabs can relate to the same task. 

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper? 

I learned that there are many different ways to conduct a quantitative research study and that even in journals with a high impact factor a lot of limitations or methodological problems in studies can occur. 

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved? 

I think that a methodological problem with the study was that the participating students were not objectively chosen. The chosen participants were then asked to recruit up to three other students. This friendship among participants along with the student observation procedures might have contributed to skewed results. Another main problem was that the participants knew they were being observed. This might also have affected their behavior patterns. They were told to that the study involved “observations of how people typically study”. I believe that this instruction may cause students to think or contemplate more about their study pattern and study in a different way than they normally would. In my opinion, an ideal method would be to randomly select all of the participants individually and make the observations by using eye tracking technology, perhaps not letting the students know exactly when they were being observed. After a certain amount of time in the “test” environment I think that the student’s studying behavior would fall back to a more default or regular pattern, thus making the observation results more accurate and interesting. 

At the start of the study, the chosen participants were distinguished by their race and median income. The conclusion was that there “were no differences in median income between school groups”. I question the routine the authors used to come to this conclusion. How you can tell the median income of all student groups by looking at the median income from each zip code? Do people with similar income automatically live in the same areas? I argue that many averages don’t have to result in an accurate answer. I think that there is an issue with separating and dividing the participants into smaller groups and then taking multiple averages of those groups to eventually land a “conclusion”. Instead, what you are doing by this is watering down the data until you get something else in entirety. Sometimes it is better to leave conclusions out if you do not have sufficient data to make the claim.

Part 2:

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

The benefits of using quantitative methods are that you are able to gather data from a larger group of participants. The data obtained is more generalizable than that from qualitative methods and it permits you to see patterns and even acquire accurate results. Some limitations of quantitative methods come to light when researching complex scenarios. In the study “Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection” by Olle Bälter et al. it was sometimes necessary to generalize data or skip certain participants due to the complex nature of the study. By having questionnaires involving both influenza and the “common cold” the symptoms sometimes coincided, leaving the results partly conflicting. Instead of solid results, the differences between the two cases instead lead to a general conclusion based on patterns or trends in results. Another limitation of quantitative methods and questionnaires is the difficulty of validating the questionnaire items. Perhaps the results are colored by the structure of the questions rather than by the participants.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

The main benefit of qualitative research is that it, unlike quantitative research, can obtain qualitative data. Qualitative data is usually more abstract and less tangible data, e.g. experiences and recitations of feelings or emotions. The reason quantitative data normally doesn't contain qualitative aspects is that such data is more difficult to quantify, the amount of resulting data is too heavy to process. The main limitation of qualitative methods is that they require an inevitably subjective interpretation. Qualitative methods with fewer participants lead to results that are individual and difficult to generalize accurate results or general conclusions from. Qualitative studies say more about the target study group participants than about the general public.