Theme 6 Reflection

This week I analysed two papers, one with a qualitative method and one with a case study. Last week I learned what a qualitative method was but this week I learned how to apply one. Also I got a much better understanding of why you should use a qualitative method in certain situations and what you get out of them. In my paper they wanted to evaluate two SMS-services. What they wanted to know was reason of why thing were like they were and how they experienced the service. An important factor of qualitative methods is that you have to prepare the meeting with informants and make them feel comfortable and safe to get as much as possible out of it.

At the first seminar I got to know a lot of new qualitative methods that I had not thought of before. Some of them seemed really interesting and I am looking forward to use them in my master thesis. Diary was the method I discussed extra during the seminar. It can be used to follow a study over time and we also discussed that there is a lot of material available on the web. In one of the attendants paper they analysed video blogs that were published by members of an online game and used them to draw conclusions. 

Case study was something new to me. Quantitative methods are often more general and qualitative methods dig a little deeper into a problem. Case studies uses both to search a narrow field. I think that the fact that it uses different kinds of methods is what I take with me the most. It proves that both quantitative and qualitative methods can be used together and learning about case studies also helps to point out the value of each method. I believe that a combination of different kind of methods gives the best results.