Theme 4, Reflections

Qualitative data is hard to gather and analyze

This  week I've come to realize that gathering and analyzing qualitative data requires a high level of skill. I contrast with quantitative methods, the qualitative methods seem to require more thought to be put into to every step of the method. One should strive to keep the sampling random, but on the other hand the requirements on participants, or data seem to be more detailed in most cases in qualitative research. The data then have to be both gathered and analyzed in a systematic way, and this without losing the important nuances in qualitative data that will help to explore the subject.

A big difference between quantitative and qualitative seems to be in the exploratory nature of the former. Qualitative methods seem to be more exploratory in nature, and I think it would really hard to argue for any hypotheses when conducting qualitative research.

The method used in the paper I read seemed quite obvious for the research question. It could be described as an analysis of essays written by participants on the subject of "my experience of growing up with interactive media". Even so I have not read any papers where that method have been used before. I really like how the authors argue for that the participants memory would be self selecting, and thus only milestones of experience with interactive communicaton would be noted in the essays that the participants wrote.

Design research and qualitative methods

I still find it hard to understand the method described in Ylva Ferneaeus paper. As I understand it a design can be motivated by theory, and tested through prototyping. Thus no further evaluation would be necessary. What I find hard to grasp is the lack of motivating why the design should be prototyped, this since I'm used to research of the type that evaluates a design because it could be used by someone for a specific task. To pursue such research further evaluation would probably be nessesary, but Fernaeus research seems to have the purpose test a design because it could be motivated trough grounded theory. To me it looks like a fine line between research, and just testing stuff to explore possibilities, and it's probably hard to formulate such research.