Theme 4: Quantitative research (after)

The theme of the previous week was quantitative research and i prepared myself by reading a research paper which used a quantitative method and answered the associated questions. The seminar this week, or workshop as Olle Bälter would call it, differed a bit from the earlier ones. This time we were divided into groups and the entire workshop consisted a competition among us where we could collect points by answering questions about quantitative and qualitative methods. Everyone in the class were really engaged and it was very stimulating to combine learning with a small competition. The workshop though was initiated by Olle who taught us some basic about how a web-survey should look like and easy mistakes that are often made. I learnt that one common mistake that sometimes appears in questionnaires is “two questions in one”, which often makes the answerer really confused. Which of the two questions should I answer? Another thing that was interesting is how people are thinking when it comes down to a question with uneven alternatives where their answer could be considered as “neutral”. Is it better to always have even numbers of alternatives or not?

Furthermore, we discussed a lot of pros and cons with web survey versus paper surveys. I haven’t really thought about it before, but you may get a clear difference in the result of a survey depending on which method you use. The advantages with a web based survey is that you can make it more interactive, it is easy to distribute and it’s flexible (you can adjust a question just by a few clicks) for example. On the other hand, some disadvantages is that you need a computer and internet connection in order to answer a web survey. This leaves out a certain group (often older people without this technique) to be able to answer. Hence, a paper questionnaire is much more pleasant for the eye but it is not as environmental friendly as a web survey. These were just some of the pros and cons that we discussed during the workshop.

It was also interesting which factors that were important in order to make a successfull web survey. First of all you should send an invitation where you introduce your survey, briefly explain the purpose behind it and give the respondent a password for the questionnaire. Later on you send a link with the url to the survey where he/she uses the password to get access to it. It is also important to remind the respondent after a while if he has forgotten to complete the survey. This could be done through phone, e-mail or letter.