This week I read the text Using social media for work: Losing your time or improving your work?
The study investigated how people use social media in purpose of the work and
how social media use yields both hedonic and utilitarian value.
The investigation was grounded by a quantitative
research in form of a big questioner in the insurance industry, with 1799
participants. The questioner was distributed in three different ways: they
visited the workplace of the participants, it was sending by email containing
an on-line version and lastly in relation to two large conferences over the country
involving the insurance companies. The participants were composed almost
equally, 52% men and 48% women. The advantage of this method is the amount of
data you get out of it, the result represent a major part of the people. The
limitation of a quantitative research is that you lose peoples own aspects and
thoughts about the specific topic. Sometimes, there is good to get peoples
expressions to get another view of the result. Another limitation is the respondent’s
dishonest responds; they just to move on to the next question just to finish
the questioner. You have to expect some of the respondents don’t choose the
right answers, just because of their unsure answers.
Some of the things that I learn from the paper were as
I wrote right above, and that it requires a lot of time to collect a big
collection of data, to analyse it and to get a significant result of it with
minimized error data. I found that this study with only workers from the
insurance industry didn’t represent all social workers. They could improve the
study by collect data from different companies in different industries, to gain
a reliability and better result.
To use
a qualitative method requires a lot of time to remind the respondents to
filling out questioners or other kind of data collections. To give them the
opportunity to participate in a lottery or give them some rewards, will
increase the participation and hopefully a more reliability result. If you have
multiple choice questions with even numbers of respondents, the unsure
responders will chooses somewhere in the middle. To improve that, it can be
better to have a “middle” choice.
The qualitative method will gain more
specific results as the responder’s own thoughts and expressions. But it takes
a lot of time to do the tasks like focus groups and interviews, it requires a
lot of time to collect the data and transcribe the materials. And lastly analyse
the result and make a good discussion and conclusion out of it.
Hi Kristina,
SvaraRaderaGreat reflections you have done on your article. I think it’s wired that they have such a broad question and only used a survey on the insurance industry. I also find I t weird that they collected the data in different ways, but maybe that a common way to do it?
You wrote that it might be good giving participants a reward for participating in the study. But don’t you think that it might compromise the results? I’m thinking that people just fill out your questionnaire to get the reward and therefore not really reflecting on the question.
Keep up the good work!
Sofia
When I reading your comment, I realised that it might not be good with rewards, just as you said. The seriously attending disappears and the result may not be trustful. That raises the question of how to attract participators? Hmm, Is it better to collect a small amount of participators instead of take the risk with a small part of un-seriously data? Thanks for a good comment!
RaderaHi Kicki!
SvaraRaderaThank you for a great reflection about quantitative research! I have to agree with Sofia, commenting above, that there is a risk with giving the participants a reward for participating in a study. A reward can give them a reason to do the study too quickly and sloppy just to get the reward, which will probably not end with good results.
Your thoughts on having an uneven number of alternatives in questioners, was exactly what Olle told us during the seminar. I thought one could use an uneven as well as an even number of alternatives when conducting a survey, so good work with figuring out that before the seminar! :)
Thank you Charlotte for the good response in your comment. As I answer Sofia, I didn’t thought of the result by given the participants some rewards. I think it’s a good question to discuss and of course it’s a risk with rewards. But I still think it would be interesting to discuss weather it gain broader result or not trustful data.
Radera