Theme 4 (pre)

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

The paper written by Östman “Information, expression, participation: How involvement in usergenerated content relates to democratic engagement among young people” use a quantitative questionnaire as its method. This method gives the paper the possibilities to make statistical models from the collected data. The data collection itself was done on a total of 1812 people and since this was a quantitative method it wasn’t even near as time consuming as it would’ve been if they instead would interview the participants. However, there are limitations to this method and not only benefits, the method used limits the participants answers by giving them answers which they can choose from instead of freely answering the questions. One example of this is what the writer decided would be user generated content in the paper and therefore the question about this (UGC) are limited to only the answers the maker of the questionnaire choose to have.

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

I’ve used both quantitative and qualitative methods myself so I don’t know if I learned anything new from reading about this method in particular. I prefer to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods so I guess this gives me a little more insight in how a paper would go about using only one of the methods.

3.       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 the main methodological problem of this study is the fact that it is only using a quantitative method. As I wrote in the previous question, I prefer to use a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods and I think it has been shown that the best results come from a combination, looking at the problem from all angles. How to improve the quantitative method in this paper would be to elaborate the questionnaire and give the participants more answers to choose from. However, this would also increase the amount of time put into analyzing the data since there would be more variety. I don’t know if I think it is a good way to go, to make the questionnaire more “qualitative”-like but as I said, the best way to improve the methodology of the study would be to add some qualitative methods.

Drumming in Immersive virtual reality

I found the text written by Ilias Bergström and his colleagues extremely interesting! I think the world of virtual reality is a very interesting area with a lot of things to explore and a lot of potential. That you can make people feel “ownership” over bodies or body parts is something new to me but I find this to be very cool and a great thing for virtual and augmented reality. The uses of this fact, which they discuss in the discussion, are very fascinating; everything from changing ones perspective entirely to get new experiences, gain more empathy for other people in different situations or to use it as a way to make different tasks easier. I think that this is something that will keep getting more and more advanced and more integrated in our modern society. Virtual and augmented reality is something you could use in so many different areas like gaming, conferences with people from across the globe, socializing and things like city planning. So I think this study is very of our time and I look forward to see what happens within the areas of virtual and augmented reality in the years to come.

1.       Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

The benefits of using quantitative methods are that it’s easy to make statistical tests on the data you get since it is often presented in numbers. Quantitative methods are great for studies that want descriptive data but it is hard to interpret that data. For example you can see what a majority of the population prefers when it comes to a feature you’ve put into a product or service but you can’t see why this feature is preferred. It can also lead to some errors and confusion when using only quantitative methods when for example you see that the majority of the population like the feature previously mentioned but maybe just in some specific circumstances, these might not be the current circumstances when they are using the feature in your product/service however and therefore we added it for naught.

2.       Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

The benefits of qualitative methods are basically the limitations of quantitative methods. The data you collect with qualitative methods can tell you a lot about people’s personalities, human behavioral and emotions in a way that quantitative methods can’t. The data can tell you why someone likes or dislikes something and/or under what circumstances. However, using qualitative methods are usually very time consuming, something that quantitative methods doesn’t need to be. The best results are often obtained with the help of both qualitative and quantitative methods to see the statistical data from quantitative methods together with the why and when from qualitative methods.

Kilteni, K., Bergstrom, I., & Slater, M. (2013). Drumming in immersive virtual reality: the body shapes the way we play. Visualization and Computer Graphics, IEEE Transactions on, 19(4), 597-605.

Östman, J. (2012). Information, expression, participation: How involvement in usergenerated content relates to democratic engagement among young people New Media & Society September 2012 vol. 14 no. 6 1004-1021