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Quantitative research

Select a media technology research paper that you argue is using quantitative methods in a good way. The paper should be of high quality, with an “impact factor” of 1.0 or above. The following are examples of questions to discuss in your blog posting:

The research paper "Evaluating the Wisdom of Strangers: The Perceived Credibility of Online Consumer Reviews on Yelp" is written by Young-shin Lim and Brandon Van Der Heide. The article was first published online on August 25,2015 in the January issue of the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication in 2015 (Issue 1, Volume 20, Pages 67-82).

The paper analyses "how people make sense of consumer reviews posted by unknown others in online communities with social networks" (Lim and Van Der Heide, 2014: 79). In addition, the study presents the factor of familiarity with a certain online platform to be in relation of evaluating and combining user profile elements. Moreover, the significance of a review predicts the perceived credibility and the position to the reviewed product.

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper?

The researchers used the method of a written survey to measure the participant’s reception of online reviews. The online questionnaire queried each participant (of 241 college students) on assessing a restaurant review accompanied by a reviewer's profile, judging the credibility of the review and to measure the attitude towards the restaurant. Moreover, the students had to fill out their level of familiarity with Yelp.com.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

Benefits include the design of the method that allows the researchers to isolate theoretically important variables. Moreover, the study approach was set to include participants of any cultural background. With the given method, the researchers were also able to set up a thought-out questionnaire attributing to a purposeful and result oriented study. They took into account other study results and tried to research other factors that could contribute, e.g. the effect of valence on the perceived credibility of Word of Mouth.

Limitations can be derived to the selection of one review instead of many reviews you usually read when browsing community sites. Furthermore, other factors than the investigated ones might attribute to a participant’s evaluation, e.g. predisposition to online review sites or the familiarity with the restaurant and their prior experience there.

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

The quantitative method attributes to a clear structure dividing each step on the way in reasonable sections, like the introduction, the presentation of key variables, source factors, followed by a detailed description of the method, the results and the discussion.

The method in the paper emphasizes the variables used to deduct the experiment. The researchers explain these in an in-depth way using previous study results on each of them, which provides a context for the variable itself and gives the reader an insight of what has to be considered.

By describing their procedure in their method design, it can be seen how a questionnaire can be measured and which scales, for instance, are used to measure perceived credibility or the attitudes towards a restaurant.

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

One of the main methodological problems of the given study might be the inability to imitate a real browsing experience. The participants, although not knowing what they are tested on, are aware that they are in an experiment and take therefore more time to evaluate the review on Yelp.com. They give unconsciously more thought to how they perceive the review, the reviewed object and the reviewer. Arguing that you usually scroll faster through these reviews, it might change the outcome of the experiment. In addition, you normally read more than one review and therefore compare different opinions of a restaurant, for instance. 

Therefore, the quantitative method could have been improved by testing participants on several user reviews instead of just one.

Read the following paper written by Ilias Bergström and colleagues. Reflect on the key points and what you learnt by reading the text. Also, briefly discuss the questions below.

The research paper Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality deals with the situation of changed reality and what you would do if you wake up in a different body but still with your own mind. The paper poses the questions on how your behaviour and attitude would be affected by the body change and if your level of performance would improve by a seemingly more appropriate body to tackle these.

By inviting a group of Caucasian people to a virtual drum session, participants were divided into groups of either Casual Dark-Skinned people or Formal Light-Skinned people. The differences in the movement pattern between these two groups of participants were investigated while they played the drums.

I learnt that body ownership can change your adaptability and performance towards a given task when you feel that your body is now more appropriate for it. Moreover, I find it interesting, that despite demographic differences you can still feel a high body ownership score and that "that those participants who had experienced the body ownership illusion more strongly showed less racial bias after the illusion than before" (Kilteni et al., 2013: 598). This result could benefit future research in multiple ways, for instance, in the field of psychology, rehabilitation or education. I find especially its benefit in the dissolution in resentment by enhancing a person's empathy, behaviour or attitude at least for a short period.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods? 

The quantitative method describes a method in scientific papers to systematically measure and evaluate behaviour, character traits or attitudes with the help of different tools. The starting points are hypotheses, which are then proven in concern to their correctness by measuring the characteristics in numbers. The quantitative method is beneficial if you want hart, replicable data explaining causal relationships that you can generalize later on. With the help of testing, experimenting and observing, you deduct your conclusion. However, individuality is not taken into account, and the response frame is limited.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

A qualitative method describes a process where the focus lies on observing individuals and their subjective interpretations and experiences. It is commonly used in new research fields or to develop hypotheses.

It is a beneficial method to ask questions how a singular person or group experiences certain situations. The focus lies here on the point of view of the subjects. Interviews, group discussions or text analysis are popular methods used qualitatively. The benefits are that the affected person is the centre of interest and that the method adjusts to the subject of investigation. Disadvantages might be that you investigate a very low number of people who cannot be representative. Moreover, the method consumes a lot of time and relatively high costs.

Lim, Y. and Van Der Heide, B., 2014. Evaluating the Wisdom of Strangers: The Perceived Credibility of Online Consumer Reviews on Yelp. J Comput-Mediat Comm, Vol. 20, No. 1, p. 67-82.

Kilteni, K., Bergstrom, I. and Slater, M., 2013. Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes the Way We Play. IEEE Trans. Visual. Comput. Graphics, Vol. 19, No. 4, p. 597-605.