I
chose a article from the Journal of
Computer-Mediated Communication (impact factor of 2,019). The article I
choose have an impact factor of 3,57 and it’s called Internet Community Group Participation: Psychosocial Benefits for Women
with Breast Cancer [1]. The paper
examines the psychosocial benefits of Internet community group participation
for women with breast cancer. A longitudinal (involves repeated observations
over a long period of time) content analysis of more than 33,200 postings from
a online breast cancer bulletin board (discussion board) and a thematic
analysis of the “life stories” of 100 women randomly selected from the bulletin
board, was conducted in the paper.
One of the reasons why I choose this article was because I felt that they used the quantitative methods in a very good way. I though, before I read this article, that it’s very hard (close to impossible) to conduct a quantitative method within a area that is very emotionally driven (i.e. cancer).
They used a multi-method, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. When collecting data in the paper, they used a content analysis and a thematic analysis. The content analysis, for the purpose to measure variables, is a method of studying and analyzing communication in a systematic, objective and quantitative manner. The content analysis examined and identified characteristics of women who use the online discussion board by first examining the membership profiles (marital status, children, residence etc.) and then by reading individual members posting on the discussion board. The thematic analysis is a qualitative method that focuses on identifying themes or patterns different behaviors.
So the quantitative method in the paper helped clarifying what kind of women who is active within the examined online breast cancer community. In the paper, they used a cross-sectionally, random collections of samples (N=100), it might be a bit few but but its not one of the main issues. One issue with this method is the sensitivity within the area of breast cancer. Many women might have the need to be private on these discussion boards and therefore not wanting to leave out personal information about them self (such as number of children, home town etc.), and therefore making generalization difficult. It also surprise me that they only used one discussion board in this paper, I think a broader perspective (with different boards) could show a broader perspective on which women that appears online. Even though they used longitudinal analysis in the paper, a even longer period of research time would be of help. Cancer, in general, is a emotional rollercoaster over a long period of time and for examine a psychosocial benefit it would help if they analyzed the members posting on the discussion board for as long as possible.
By reading this paper I really got a better understanding of the benefit of using a combination of method. It helps triangulates the papers observations and data and therefore provides a greater insight than a single method, it also helps understands the full nature of online discussion boards within the area of women with breast cancer. I also got a better understanding of how one could use a quantitative method to support the qualitative findings.
1. One limitation with the quantitative method is that the result is highly depending on the participants. In this particularly paper only 1111 out of 5000 invited participants responded to all of the five follow-up questions, which is a low overall response rate. A natural follow-up question to this is who actually responding? Why did they chose to respond to the survey, do they have any personal interests in this subject? It’s extra important in this paper cause of the fact that they are examine stress, and less stressed people are more likely to answer and therefore may cause misleading results. A benefit with a quantitative method is that it is easy to conduct and reach a large amount of people (with a survey for example), that in turn leads to a great amount of data to analyze. Its also not very time consuming or need of resources in comparison with qualitative methods. But a limitation that comes with this is that the results depends on your questions, if the participants misinterprets your questions or the questions was badly formulated the whole survey gets useless.
2. A benefit in using qualitative methods is that they are more adaptable to the paper/study you conducting. Due to the flexibility of the question and the way data in collected, they result in longer more comprehensive answers with very specific answers about your topic. But like I said above, it can be time and resource consuming to conduct and the answers can also be hard do analyze and categories.
One of the reasons why I choose this article was because I felt that they used the quantitative methods in a very good way. I though, before I read this article, that it’s very hard (close to impossible) to conduct a quantitative method within a area that is very emotionally driven (i.e. cancer).
They used a multi-method, combining quantitative and qualitative methods. When collecting data in the paper, they used a content analysis and a thematic analysis. The content analysis, for the purpose to measure variables, is a method of studying and analyzing communication in a systematic, objective and quantitative manner. The content analysis examined and identified characteristics of women who use the online discussion board by first examining the membership profiles (marital status, children, residence etc.) and then by reading individual members posting on the discussion board. The thematic analysis is a qualitative method that focuses on identifying themes or patterns different behaviors.
So the quantitative method in the paper helped clarifying what kind of women who is active within the examined online breast cancer community. In the paper, they used a cross-sectionally, random collections of samples (N=100), it might be a bit few but but its not one of the main issues. One issue with this method is the sensitivity within the area of breast cancer. Many women might have the need to be private on these discussion boards and therefore not wanting to leave out personal information about them self (such as number of children, home town etc.), and therefore making generalization difficult. It also surprise me that they only used one discussion board in this paper, I think a broader perspective (with different boards) could show a broader perspective on which women that appears online. Even though they used longitudinal analysis in the paper, a even longer period of research time would be of help. Cancer, in general, is a emotional rollercoaster over a long period of time and for examine a psychosocial benefit it would help if they analyzed the members posting on the discussion board for as long as possible.
By reading this paper I really got a better understanding of the benefit of using a combination of method. It helps triangulates the papers observations and data and therefore provides a greater insight than a single method, it also helps understands the full nature of online discussion boards within the area of women with breast cancer. I also got a better understanding of how one could use a quantitative method to support the qualitative findings.
1. One limitation with the quantitative method is that the result is highly depending on the participants. In this particularly paper only 1111 out of 5000 invited participants responded to all of the five follow-up questions, which is a low overall response rate. A natural follow-up question to this is who actually responding? Why did they chose to respond to the survey, do they have any personal interests in this subject? It’s extra important in this paper cause of the fact that they are examine stress, and less stressed people are more likely to answer and therefore may cause misleading results. A benefit with a quantitative method is that it is easy to conduct and reach a large amount of people (with a survey for example), that in turn leads to a great amount of data to analyze. Its also not very time consuming or need of resources in comparison with qualitative methods. But a limitation that comes with this is that the results depends on your questions, if the participants misinterprets your questions or the questions was badly formulated the whole survey gets useless.
2. A benefit in using qualitative methods is that they are more adaptable to the paper/study you conducting. Due to the flexibility of the question and the way data in collected, they result in longer more comprehensive answers with very specific answers about your topic. But like I said above, it can be time and resource consuming to conduct and the answers can also be hard do analyze and categories.
[1]
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1083-6101.2005.tb00268.x/abstract
Inga kommentarer:
Skicka en kommentar