Quantitative Research - Reflections

Since I started my first day at Rönninge elementary school have I come in contact with both qualitative and quantitative methods many times. Even though I did not understand the exact meaning of the two terms to the fullest have I at least used some of the different methods many times. I have done all from interviews with teachers about their thoughts on grading to oral surveys with my fellow classmates about the bad meals in school. It was not until my years in the academic circle at KTH I fully understood what quantitative and qualitative methods actually contributes to in an academic paper.

During my bachelor thesis in the spring of 2012 did my knowledge on quantitative and qualitative methods really came to a test, when I actually had to define what the two terms meant and make an active choice of what methods to include. When reflecting on my work today, after getting more understanding of the two terms and after reading many more academic papers compared to 2012, can I admit that I did not fully understand what I was doing. I more or less took all “popular” qualitative and quantitative methods and mixed them up while indirect motivating my behaviour with: “the more the merrier”. Hence this course fits perfectly in my schedule, it is the period just before I am going to write my master thesis.

One thing I have reflected much on this past week is which of the two methodologies of collecting data I believe to be the best. On one hand can the quantitative data be much better because it will give the paper a broader understanding, since many more opinions can be involved, My selected paper for this week had for example almost half a million different inputs, therefore is it impossible to ignore what is being stated. What the quantitative data gain in the amount of different opinions, it lacks in quality of whom the opinions comes from. A comment and an estimation on the future of the Swedish economy will for example be much more trustworthy if it comes from a professor from a Swedish University rather than a thousands kinder garden teachers. In that sentence can the qualitative methods be much better fitted than the quantitative since it provides a deeper understanding to the paper.

It will be extremely interesting to see how I will construct my master thesis after Christmas, will I make the same mistake of just adding all methods in a foggy mix or will I take decisions based on academic thoughts? I believe that this week’s subject has not only made me gain more knowledge of how to collect empirical data, it has also made me reflect deeper on why we collect data, and to what purpose.