Quantitative vs. Qualitative

Search library catalog/ research databases for 2 scholarly books, book chapters in an

edited volume or 2 or academic peer reviewed journal articles (or 1 of each), on topics

in communication research. If one or more of your selections is clearly about human

communication, but you are not sure if its is appropriate for this assignment, ask me.

Communication research has an interdisciplinary range, and there may be some

interdisciplinary scholarship, and/articles published in interdisciplinary journals (for

example in womens studies, technology studies, ethnic studies) that are about human

communication and will be acceptable for this assignment. If you are not sureask.

One of your research articles or book chapters should be based on a qualitative

research approach, the other based on a quantitative research approach. You will be

writing a paper reviewing and comparing the strengths and limitations of each strategy

relative to the phenomena of interest to the author.

How to get started:

Search the librarys databases and catalog for books and or peer reviewed research

articles in a subfield of communication that deal with a phenomenon of interest to you.

In addition to the techniques we learn in the library, look in our research methods text

pps. 105-107for a starting list of journal titles that regularly feature qualitative

research), then search the electronic indexes within a particular journal for keywords

and subject headings.

Topic Example:

Assume that you are interested in understanding patterns of health

communication; specifically, how partners deal with the intersection between financial

stress and other stressors around chronic health conditions, and what/how they

communicate about this with health care professionals. You find one study called:

Communicating about stress in the financial assistance interview: Does a workshop

help? in a journal called The Journal of Health Communication.

(This is a fictitious example).

There is no clue here whether or not this is qualitative or quantitative research.

You have to read further to see how the study is described. Read the abstract of the

journal article or the full record of the catalog entry if it is a book. If you see the terms

H1, H2 (hypothesis 1, hypothesis 2), analysis of variance (ANOVA); statistically

significant; control group; effect, no effect, correlation, etc., the study is probably based

on/informed by, in part or whole, a quantitative approach.

If you see the terms such as ethnography/ic, participant observation, field notes,

interviews, focus groups, audio and videotape, case study, thematic analysis, it is likely

the case (though not definitely the case, because researchers often combine methods) this

item in question is informed by a qualitative research approach.

Back to our topic

Read a few records from the search results to see if you are on the right track. If

the research abstract says something like:

the spouses of 200 inpatients in a veterans hospital who self identified on a survey

as depressed experiencing severe financial hardship and abusing drugs or

alcohol were subjected to the Jones-Goody Stress Marker, a battery of 20 questions

administered at first contact, then at 30, 60 90 days after a financial assistance

interview and workshop……Survey questions also included items inquiring about

positive or negative evaluation of the workshop, severity of financial situation, age

of patient, age of partner, the presence or absence of dependent children or other

dependents in the household, participation or non-participation in treatment for

substance abuse, participation of the/ patient-spouse at the workshops….(you might

see in the articles discussion of methods terms such as standard deviation, mean, t-

test, amount, frequency, rate, ANOVA, as the researcher is looking for patterns

among and relationships between the variables, trying to see what seems to co-vary.

)

Then, this is probably a quantitative research paper.

If, instead, the research abstract says something like

Ethnographic study based on participant observation and interview data gathered

over a 4-month period in a large VA facility with inpatient and outpatient services

The researcher volunteered on the night shift as an orderly in a cafeteria in this VA

facility in Maryland, observing informal and formal interaction among inpatients

significant others before and after financial assistance interviews and workshops.

The researcher spoke with 200 S/os on a variety of topics related to their own and

the VA patients health care situations.

Open-ended interviews were conducted in the hospital, and in the S/Os homes.

Thematic analysis of the interviews revealed…..

… Though not all of these themes were commonly voiced by all of the partners of the

hospitalized, each characterized themselves as being stressed just before and just

after the financial interview with the VA staff.

The research focuses on the themes within money talk (its presence or absence as

a noisy silence ) amongst those with a partner in the hospital.

focuses on the numerous ways that partners of the hospitalized communicate about

money, money problems, and how they talk about money talk with each other,

staff and hospital professionals, partners, and with the researcher. The research is

a case study, an attempt to explore the types, meanings, and significance of various

kinds of talk about money in this circumstance…

..then you have found a qualitative research study.

Next, once you have selected publications, make sure they are on COMPARABLE or

related topics. They dont have to be identical; they dont have to ask the same question.

In fact, this is unlikely, (that they ask the same question), given the variety of

assumptions each researcher working from a quantitative or qualitative perspective

brings to the way they would frame the work, and what they would consider data.

YOUR TASK IS TO READ BOTH ARTICLES CAREFULLY AND THOROUGHLY

AND WRITE A COMPARISON/ REVIEW. INTRODUCE EACH ARTICLE BEFORE

YOU START TALKING ABOUT IT, (AUTHOR,(s), YEAR, TITLE, ETC.)

ANSWER THE FOLLOWING QUESTIONS, GIVING EXAMPLES FROM THE

ARTICLE OR BOOK TO SUPPORT YOUR ANSWERS.

1.What scholarly conversation does the author reference in the introduction? Look for

phrases that point to others work such as: Recent work in symbolic interaction

suggests or media scholars have long argued that… or Feminist scholars have

demonstrated that… this signals a frame of reference and tells the reader with whom the

author is entering into scholarly conversation).

2. What is the central research question or topic of the paper? /Is it a question about a

communication phenomenon, process, or relationship? is it a broad topic/question or

is it very specific? i.e. ( We hope to shed light on the relationship between x and y ;

test the following hypothesis(ses), or we hope to understand some of the significance

and meanings for participants of…

3. Does the author/ do the authors pose a RQ (research question) as though it has one

answer, or as though they are seeking to understand some aspect of a broad

phenomenon, relationship, or process?

4. What is presented as DATA in the project? Are the sampling methods/limitations of

these data samples discussed?

5. How is the data subjected to analysis? In other words, what does the author do with

the data, or what do they want to tell us and how do they present and organize their

discussion? (Is there any discussion of (for example) thematic analysis? content

analysis? discourse analysis? network analysis? some other kind? Does the author

invoke a theoretical analysisdo they talk about feminist perspectives, critical theory,

postcolonial theory, queer theory, some other kind of analytic frame?

6. Are the limits/strengths of the chosen methodologies and analytic tools made explicit

by the author? Are any next steps for future research suggested?

7. Which study presents in your view, the most convincing and satisfying fit between the

subject matter, the question, the research design, and the methodological tools used?

Which one did you find more interesting? Why?

Note: You may find that one article has a QUAL or QUANT approach, while the second

one has a MIXED method approach. It is easier to contrast two articles with completely

different methodologies, but if you do have one that is mixed method while the other is

entirely QUANT or QUAL focus on the aspects that will help you demonstrate your

understanding of the differences between QUAL and QUANT.

Can you see a place for a quantitative dimension to the qualitative study (or vice versa)

that would strengthen either or both research projects (if yes or no, why?)

****USE QUOTATION MARKS APPROPRIATELY WHEN CITING SOURCES. IN-

TEXT CITATIONS /QUOTATIONS IN THE BODY OF A PAPER REQUIRE PAGE

NUMBERS. YOU MUST REMEMBER TO INCLUDE PAGE NUMBERS IN YOUR

CITATIONS!!!******

DO NOT FORGET TO ALSO PROVIDE APA style citations for both articles at the

end of your paper on a REFERENCES page.