Arozin - Last reflection

This course have been one big roller coaster for me. I couldn't get a grip on its application and purpose from the start, but during the course I slowly came to appreciate it. The first part of the course was about theory and the definition of knowledge and both of them are deep subjects that requires a somewhat creative mind and being able to think outside the box to comprehend. I did find both of the subjects quite fascinating but I had a hard time understanding why they were relevant. Somewhere in the middle of the course we introduced the concept of hypothesis and the definition and usage of theory started to show itself. The connection between them and their purpose started to show itself. It was during a seminar when we discussed the differentiation between theory and hypothesis when we came up with a pretty good definition of their connection and their similarities and differences.

We defined that empirical data is the link between theory and hypothesis, where theory are often based on assumptions and the interpretation of similar cases, the study of empirical data, and the application of it to build your theory transforms it into a hypothesis.

I especially came to enjoy the course in the end, where we combined the other themes and started to make sense of it all. Thereby their correlation became somewhat clear.

During the last year I have found a fascination of data analysis of quantitative data, and how to extract and use their hidden information for your gain. The combination of statistical analysis and quantitative methods combined can be really effective while trying to make sense of big data. So during this course the part that treated the application of quantitative methods and their application cought my attention.

I took another course during this semester, industrial marketing, where one part of the course treated the use of big data and the purpose of applying quantitative methods and evaluations to create marketing concepts and campaigns by analyzing it. This is a method that the worlds biggest IT companies are working with today (i.e. Google, Apple Microsoft), but since big data usually means terabytes or even petabytes of raw data, its hard to apply a “regular” method to extract something of it.

The advantages of quantitative methods are vast, but one that I think is especially mentionable is that you get results that are easy to compare. Since quantitative methods usually comes down to surveys and such were the questions and answers are already predefined, by examining the results you can aquire a general idea of the opinion of a certain population or group of people. The hard part here is to get sufficient responders so the data can represent the whole group at a significant level, and if you get enough responders, can you apply your results on other external groups or communities? These are all questions that I reflected upon during the course, I have acquired conclusions on some of them, and I are still trying to make sense of the rest.

After the theme of quantitative methods we entered the subject of qualitative and design research. The usage and application of qualitative methods directly caught my attention, since I see it as a brother to the application of quantitative methods. The usage of qualitative methods in itself didn't interest me very much, but its possibilities when combined with other methods seemed powerful, and that cought my attention.

Haibo Li stated that man spends to much time on solving a problem, when she should spend more time on defining the problem at hand. I thought that he had a good point, which got confirmed a week later when I heard a data analyst (Fredrik Göthner, an old Mediatechnology student) from Spotify talk about their approach to big data. He also mentioned the value of being able to define the problem at hand and breaking it up into smaller problems that can be treated and solved individually. Both Haibo and Fredrik talked about the power of defining problems, which was inspiring, since I have tried to apply that concept myself during my time as a student.

the combination of quantitative and qualitative methods, and the power of them together caught my interest during the course. A general way to put it is that quantitative research gives you the answer to “what is” while qualitative methods gives you the answer to “why it is”. For example, if you want to investigate the consumer behaviour of a specific geographic segment of consumers, you can convey a quantitative survey that you send out through different channels. The survey itself should be formed with specific questions and a couple of predefined answers, which in the end can be studied and analyzed to draw conclusions. This method tells you how your target group behaves, and you can see their consumer patterns and such, which later on can help you with whatever you use this data for, designing marketing concepts, putting a new product on the market, repositioning a retailer store or something else.

The problem with this method is that it does not give you a very good answer to why they behave like they do, and can be explain through a quantitative study. If you know the behaviour of a group you can form your quantitative questions to fit in, and give you the answers you seek. In this particular case I would construct a quantitative interview, and creat an interview group of a percentage of the segment which is able to represent its entirety. Through this application you break down the segment by asking them different questions which later on can paint the whole picture of their behaviour, and also explain why they behave like they do.

I think these methods will be very valuable to us as future engineers, not only in the construction and implementation of our bachelor and master thesis, but also later in our lives. 

Arozin - comments

Theme 1 pre:


Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html
Have you reflected on the definition of truth? who has the right to define what is truthful or not ? If I recall correctly Socrates argued that all of mans conclusions and assumptions is what he called a subjective truth, if it isn't based on any empirical evidence. and further discussed what impact truth shall have on our society, since it is so vaguely interpreted and defined.


Terese Skoog
http://dm2572tereseskoog.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory.html
Have you reflected on the point of what we expect to percieve? i thought about this while reading your thoughts on Theaetetus, and I know there is an Youtube video of one of the worlds now most famous violinists, standing in a subway plattform in New York (I think it was) and playing, and people barely stoped to listen. this is the violinist whos concert tickets cost thousand of dollar. The report from this was that they judged people to be uneducated since they didn´t appreciate his music in the subway. I interpret this as that people didn't expect to hear that kind of beauty, and judged him to be a regular streetmusician. and then it came down to what we expect to perceive.

Theme 1 post:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-theory-of-knowledge-and.html
I think one aspect we forgot to discuss at the seminar (the baby discussion) was the aspects of instincts. The human baby is the least sophisticated newborn among all newborn mammals, and thereby human babies have to learn the fundamental things long before it can start to acquire knowledge. things like, walking, talking and such basic skills takes months for a newborn to understand and use. and I think the concept of instincts have followed man through her evolution,some of us are today fully grown, but still use these instincts, and acquire new instincts.

Terese Skoog
http://dm2572tereseskoog.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-1-theory-of-knowledge-and-theory_12.html
Well, isn't our pure reason subconsciously influenced by our experiences? I get the concept of A priori judgements, but I don't concur on all of it. Man is influenced of all her perceptions, small and large, all the time, either you want it or not.

Theme 2 pre:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies_12.html
have you reflected on that an aura may be entirely subjective? I interpreted the definition of an aura as how something affects us, what impressions we get when interacting with an object, or a concept? If we for example try to conclude what the aura of the colour orange represents to two different groups of people, christians see orange as the color of gluttony, where orange is the national colour of the Netherlands and represents their independence and freedom.

Terese Skoog
http://dm2572tereseskoog.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies.html
I define aura as what an object radiates. this can be both in terms of heat, or shadows, or something that it actually radiates. Then we have the subjective aura, the subjective way an object or a phenomena influence man. For example, if you see fire, I may interpret it as warmth, and light, while another person may associate fire with destruction or ruin.

Theme 2 post:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/09/reflection-critical-media-studies.html
Interesting reflection on the definition of Nominalism. I interpreted Nominalism as a way of thinking which encourages man to believe in the real world, and break free from the fantasy world of myth. That man in some way rather shall use pure reason and science as the base, and not a superstition in form of myth.

Pontus Ter Vehn
http://dm2572pontustv.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-2-critical-media-studies-part-2.html
I really like your thought that "Causing people to suppress their revolutionary thoughts is a revolutionary potential in itself" which I agree with. its like filling up a cup, if the government always pour more and more liquid into it (revolutionary potential) it will at one point pour over, which can have dire consequences in the end. The arabic spring is one example of this, where one people have been oppressed for a long time, and finally they take the matter in their own hand, and also use the power of internet and social media to work against their oppressors.

Theme 3 pre:

Gabriella Sanchez karlsson
http://dm2572gsk.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory.html
according to your definition of theory, during our seminaar we came to one conclusion of what the definition may be. A theory should explain why data were observed or are expected to be observed, that the theory are often just based on a hunch or a feeling, and when you start to base the theory on logical and empirical data, it become a hypothesis. A hypothesis is the bridge between a theory and empirical data, that separated these three are somewhat useless, but combined can be pretty effective.

Terese Skoog
http://dm2572tereseskoog.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory.html
During my seminar my group came up with a pretty solid definition of theory, hypothesis and empirical data, at least we thought it was. The definition is that neither of the three is superly useful when standing alone, but if you combine the three you get a solid chain of understanding. the hypothesis creates a link between the theory and the empirical data studied.Theory: Emphasizes the behaviour of causal relationships and thereby identifying what happens before and after an event. A theory explains why empirical data were observed or are expected to be observed. Empirical data: describes which empirical patterns were observed. Hypotheses: Should explain what is expected to occur before observing empirical data and shall not contain logical arguments about why empirical data are expected to be correct

Theme 3 post:

Viktor Leandersson
http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-3-postreflections-research-and.html
Interesting definition of theory, and theory about theories. Isn't a theory at first constructed based on your knowledge of the area? few people can create a theory out from nothing, and you will always have some subconscious knowledge that will influence your theory. Your thought on the difference between theory and knowledge is interesting and I think that the thing here is that you use your knowledge not as a direct basis to your theory, but rather some kind of references point which you can use to relate to and construct your theory.

Pontus Ter Vehn
http://dm2572pontustv.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-3-research-and-theory-part-2.html
Conservatism can be one factor that holds scientific evolution back. and since man is generaly afraid of changes and the unknown, this is something that we, as engineers and users of science have to take in notion while working. That people will always question our path and why we are doing things, since they don´t know themselves.

Theme 4 pre:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research.html
I concur with you on the point that taking data from already asked questions is wrong due to designed to another purpose. However, one way to use this kind of data is either to use as another opinion and refer to it as a source of information as long as you explain that it is data from a survey with another purpose. But you shouldn't refer to it as your primary source, only a source to fill in blanks and similar.

Gabriella Sanchez karlsson
http://dm2572gsk.blogspot.se/2014/09/theme-4-quantitative-research.html
One benefit of quantitative methods are the amount of raw data acquired of different questions within the same field. raw data that may or may not be independent of one another gives you the possibility to draw different conclusions through statistical analyzes, checking for correlations and behaviour within. In your paper it can be that we can see if there's any correlation between students from different schools, if their demographic positioning affects the results, or similar investigations.

Theme 4 post:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflections-quantitative-research.html
Good reflection, After these weeks I got a better insight in the combination between quantitative and qualitative methods when i comes to a scientific research. That qualitative methods can contemplate the quantitative results and give you a better understanding of you findings.

Pontus Ter Vehn
http://dm2572pontustv.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-4-quantitative-research-part-2.html
I really did enjoy Olles seminar, since interaction with students and the competition spurs students to participate. And when it comes to quantitative methods, they are hard to construct, especially to design them in an effective way, so you can maximize you findings and be able to see correlations and similarities between different groups of data. I think that Olle gave us a pretty good picture on how to do this, with his Do's and Don'ts as you mentioned.

Theme 5 pre:

Gabriella Sanches Karlsson
http://dm2572gsk.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research.html
I would argue that you should perform your qualitative method based upon your Quantitative findings (in most cases) since Quantitative methods confirm your hypothesis, and a qualitative study based upon this information can confirm why or why not your hypothesis are correct or not.

Terese Skoog
http://dm2572tereseskoog.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-design-research.html
You interpret the contemplation between quantitative and qualitative methods in the same way as I do. Qualitative methods are often used to verify why something occurred, something that are proven to occur by the quantitative analysis. The problem here can be that you still have to do a somewhat extensive qualitative analysis, depending on the amount of participants in your quantitative research. for example, if you make a survey with over 10.000 participants, you can't (in my opinion) make your qualitative analysis of less than 50 of these since the qualitative supply must still be able to represent your quantitative supply of participants.

Theme 5 post:

Åsa Linder
http://dm2572aslind.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-5-reflection.html
I've also had a hard time separating quantitative methods and qualitative, but through this course i have found a way that I can separate them. Quantitative methods is a wide method,and by wide I mean that you have a lot of test subjects, that all of them have to answer the same question which later can be transcribed into raw data that can be examined. Quantitative methods only answers IF you are correct. Qualitative methods are kind of the opposite, you have a small number of subjects, which you often interview and adapt you questions through the process. The qualitative methods can be applied to you quantitative finding s to try and find WHY your quantitative findings were correct or not. The definition above is mainly for quantitative/qualitative surveys, but their internal theory can be applied to all kinds of usage of quantitative and qualitative methods.

Jenny Bern
http://jennybern.blogspot.se/2014/10/reflection-of-week-5.html
I agree with you that this weeks papers that we read were more of a typical media technology paper, and I thought that Haibos lecture were the most interesting of the two. Mainly because he talked about the general use and process of design research and referring to his own research as examples, while Eva-Lotta mainly talked about her specific research.

Theme 6 pre:

Viktor leandersson
http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html
now to your text, good reflection on the usage of qualitative methods, that you discuss the side effects etc. This especially when it comes to face2face interviews, how do you compare a persons answers to another persons answers, when they in their basic form are subjective. You can't really compare two subjective answers, and here it comes down to the analyst, to do a subjective conclusion of which one were the best.

Jenny Bern
http://jennybern.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study.html
Nice evaluation of the definition of a case study. One point I think is crucial to case studies is that you evaluate and examine cases that occured in the past, and you examine it to either investigate the phenomena itself, or you investigate it to study a certain behaviour.

Theme 6 post:

Christian Virtala
http://virtaladm2572.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-qualitative-and-case-study_26.html
Hi I also found the last part of the seminar interesting, where we discussed the "information-overload" - aspect of case studies. That to much data gathered form different sources may contradict each other, and thereby provide a faulty view of the problem. I always think there is a risk in using already gathered data to draw you conclusions, even tough their internal questions may be formulated in the same way, and therefore they should provide the same answers and results, I think that people subconsciously takes the subject of the whole survey (or similar data collection method) in mind while answering, which may affect how you answer.

Viktor leandersson
http://evilmadscientists.blogspot.se/2014/10/theme-6-postreflection-qualitative-and.html
Good reflection, I also think that Haibos lecture gave us another perspective on case studies and their applications. One overall problem with sustainable thinking is that we assume that everyone should apply it, every country and culture, which may work in theory but never in reality. Since todays industrial countries (the US and western countries) have already passed the unsustainable phase, and improved their society through it. and lets say, the Chinese or Russians that are in their unsustainable evolving phase right now argues that they need to pass it to be able to think sustainable.

Arozin - Qualitative methods and case study, reflection

This week was the last week on the course, and reflected on the last theme which was qualitative methods and case studies. First we discussed the definition of a case, and later the definition of a case study.  The general idea is that a case is a happening or a phenomena in a specific field that can be analyzed to answer a hypothesis in another field. I read a paper where the author made a case study of the closure of a university where students came with opinions and protested through twitter. Even though the researcher only made a case study of one case rather than 4-10 which are needed the paper still showed the general idea of a case study. I think that case study is a well used concept with an unknown name, this since we use cases and the knowledge of late experiences to construct a definition of a hypothesis of something which are being observed. If we don't have the knowledge we can Google it and get the information required. I think that case studies is the name of a more well structured way of gathering information of something, molded after its application on scientific papers or similar, while the more common usage of case studies are used every day by the regular people.

The next part we discussed was the definition and usage of qualitative methods in general and in application on case studies. The definition of qualitative methods have been discussed back and forth throughout the course,  but during this week I read something for the first time where they applied a qualitative method. As I mentioned in my previous blog post it was about a research conducted through Second Life, and the approach to the qualitative interview that took place. This paper gave me a concrete example of the pros n' cons of different qualitative methods which we discussed through the seminar. We also had to approach the aspect of using quantitative methods in combination with qualitative while conducting a case study. From all of this we concluded that case studies are good in general and can result in good data for your research, but you have to conduct several of them to get a good overview. You also have to adapt the data acquired from different cases so they are all going in the same direction without altering the original data itself. As with everything else conducted in the name of science you will have to refer to it, now especially when it comes to external cases that had nothing to do with your research in the first place.

I think this last theme was really good, and I got the impression that all the themes we had before built up to this last one.

Arozin - Design research, reflection

This week we had a guest lecture with Eva-Lotta Sallnäs Pysander, who talked about haptics and design research. The Lecture was not what I had expected, since Sallnäs mainly talked about her own research in the fields of haptics, which doesn't interest me at all, and I expected her to talk about design research in a more general consensus, and use her own research only as examples. She didn't really do this, so this lecture were not particularly interesting for me.  

But some of her statements poked my mind and got me thinking, especially the one where she said “peace on earth through haptics, peace on earth is a valid ground for science”, and compared it with the phenomena of “flaming” on the internet, that internet can be interpreted as a barrier which you can use while discussing on the internet, often used in negative ways through harassment and similar. She argued that haptics can be used to tear down this barrier, and create a friendlier internet. I think she got a point, even though I think this is a distant future, they should still pursue it.

And the concept of peace on earth should in some way be the ultimate goal of everyone, no matter what, but saying that it is a valid ground for science is a little bit harsh, you can't just simply state that whatever research you are conducting will bring peace to all of mankind, without any further arguments.

She also mentioned that collaborative research or tests may give you quantitative or qualitative research for free. I assumed from the beginning of this theme that that were the general idea of creating collaborative tests and similar in the first place. To acquire knowledge about how subjects interact with each other and adapt to the group, and in some ways be compared to a hive mind or collective intelligence.

During this theme I learned more from reading her texts and answering the questions given, than from the guest lecturer, and I hope next weeks guest lecturer with Haibo Li will be more interesting.

Arozin - Qualitative research and case study

I chose the paper The Self and Second Life: A Case Study Exploring the Emergence of Virtual Selves written by Simon Evans and published in the journal  Computers in human behaviour (2.489)

Regarding which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper, their benefits and limitations, what I learnt about qualitative methods and the methodological problems within.

Evans conducted literature research to base his theory and hypothesis upon and also to construct interview questions. They had one hour interviews with 40 different people where the only similarity was their usage of Second Life (SL) The extraordinary with this research was that all of the interviews were conducted online through SL, with the respondents avatars as responders and almost no involvement with their Real Life (RL) which apparently has its advantages and disadvantages.

Evans didn't have to travel around the world to conduct the interviews since he could maintain them from his computer, there were no implications from time zone differences or similar. The interviews were conducted through SLs internal texting tool, which made it possible to download and analyze all of it.

The anonymity of the respondents was something that he questioned, will people be truthful in their responses? will it be effective with a written interview?  

Qualitative methods can be used in different ways, and I assume that there is no right or wrong in the way to do it, only how effective or ineffective it may be. After reading the paper I think that he used a pretty ineffective method, but the circumstances required it and he made the best of it which is a baseline on qualitative methods, no case is normal, all of them have their irregularities that you have to adapt to.

The problem with qualitative methods is that you may never get any hard facts or evidence around your question, since it can be hard to interpret interview answers. Therefore I think qualitative research should be conducted after quantitative research and examination, and mainly to confirm your quantitative findings.

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I chose the paper The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university written by Nicholas J. Kelling, Angela S. Kelling and John F. Lennon and published in the journal Computers in human behaviour (2.489)

Regarding the explanation of the definition of a case study to a first year university student and the analysis of my papers strengths and weaknesses.

The concept of a case study implies the explanatory or descriptive analysis of an event or person. You try to find the happenings around the event , what caused it, why and when and you study what effects the observed phenomena caused, and why it caused them. You try to find out everything relevant around the case.

The strengths of this paper was that it presented their theory rather instantly, which gives the reader a red thread to follow while reading. They used several methods to collect their data, mainly quantitative data datamined from social media sites and various forums to utilize and assess students opinions and actions. They based their hypothesis on a variety of literature in different research fields which all had a connection to their research, but their hypothesis got disproved, since they discovered that the majority of the datamined content came from non-students, and only 5.6% f the original source were students who had referred to more classical media tools. They came to the conclusion that classical methods of communicating and gathering opinions are not neglected.

Since the data were datamined they could check for correlations and affiliations between the different groups of data which opens up the possibility to investigate unknown relationships and causalities that may in the end prove important to the hypothesis.

The case study itself was interesting, but I didn't find it as effective as it could have been. For one thing the layout of the report was hard to read, since they included mathematical calculations in the flowing text, which made it hard to get an overall feeling for which can turn up to be ineffective if a contemplator wants to get a general feeling for the results. They didn't use any qualitative methods i.e. interviews.

They draw their conclusions on a percentage, which in my opinion can be wrong since they put the students participation in context with the whole society. Say for example that each and every student utilized Twitter to their fullest, and participated as much as they could, but they still only reached up to 5.6% since the rest of society outweighs them in pure numbers. Instead they should draw their conclusions on two factors, the one which they did (the percentage) but also to examine the group of students internally, see the average participation rate of each student. by doing this you can look upon the results from two different angles, which may alter your conclusion.

Arozin - Design research

How can media technologies be evaluated?

The usage of media technologies are based on the satisfactions of its users. Is the product interesting? Is it comfortable to use, are the user interested in it’s purpose and are you willing to buy it ? What senses are stimulated, is it easy to understand etc. Media technology should in the first stages be evaluated through qualitative methods, so the researchers and designers can collect extensive and detailed data from the participants over a specific time period where several tests have been completed, so they can evaluate and compare the tests internally to observe improvements and correlations. Media technologies should be evaluated through quantitative methods when the product have been on the market, to get an overall view of the users opinion of the product.

What role will prototypes play in research?

Prototypes is a way to confirm the hypothesis and thereby theories in newly investigated fields. A prototype gives the researchers the opportunity to test their concept, process or product in a live environment with influences from the surroundings, influences which may be overlooked or forgotten in the products hypothesis. Different prototypes are used during the development to detect flaws, confirm assumptions, try different concepts and usage areas, test a new design to enhance the alpha product before it goes on the market.  

Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?

A proof of concept (POC) prototype is used to prove that the concept at hand may work and its feasibility, as compared to an engineering prototype is seen as an early version of the future alpha. Since the concept is one of the base pillars which the product at hand is built upon, you have to confirm its validity.

What are characteristics and limitations of prototypes?

The limitations of prototypes are almost always based on the budget. The research team cuts down on the costs of the prototypes to get them more cost effective which damages their effectivity, different materials behave differently to different usage, the prototypes only represent a compromise of the final product, and therefore a prototype may fail where the product will not.

A positive thing with prototypes is that you can make prototypes of several parts of the product and test them individually, so the production of a full prototype gets neglected. Researchers use this rapid-prototyping method to test different parts, optimize them and then combining them to the final product.

How can design research be communicated/presented?

This solely depends on what case you are facing. If you want to promote a product to you selected target group, you can make a marketing video, if you shall present a case to the board, you can use a powerpoint backed up with analyzed data.

How does a collaborative setting differ from a single user setting as regards methodology used and the results obtained?

Every kind of method has its advantages and disadvantages, a collaborative setting versus a single user setting are no different. Collaborative settings have the benefits of several minds working on the same problem, and thereby having different angles to the problem at hand, which opens up for new and different solutions. A collaborative setting challenges each individuals collaborative skills, which may benefit them in the long run but a negative side with a collaborative setting is the concept of “free riding” which is when one or more individuals knowingly neglects to do their part, forcing the other team members to do it.

One benefit that single user settings have is that it forces individuals to challenge their own minds. You dont have any peers or co-workers while trying to solve a problem by yourself, and this is a valuable skill that can come in hand in dire situations, how to outsmart you own mind and solve collaborate problems individually.

How can qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study complement each other?

Quantitative methods can be use to confirm a hypothesis and if an assumption are correct, while the qualitative method can can analyse the findings and validate the quantitative analysis hypothesis, and thereby present the factors that validated the hypothesis. A qualitative research can  give you indepth knowledge to why a quantitative survey or similar were confirmed to be accurate. Quantitative and qualitative research complement each other within the same study field, and the one may contain answers which the other may not.

I would argue that a qualitative study shall take place after a quantitative study has taken place and the results have been proved accurate.

Quantitative methods confirms if a hypothesis is correct or not.

Qualitative methods explains why a hypothesis is correct.

How can using both subjective and objective methods give a better understanding of a phenomenon?

A subjective phenomena can be hard to evaluate, since it is based on its own context. thereby each individual may perceive it differently. for example, how can we decide if something is heavy? You solely base our conclusion on your own strength, while your friend may be stronger and perceive the object as light. A objective method draws it conclusions from the object at hand, and negates any subjective influences. Subjective and objective methods work the same way as quantitative and qualitative methods, they contemplate each other and should be used together to come up with the most accurate conclusions, which can be based upon both subjective and objective observations.

Arozin - Quantitative research, reflection

I have always found quantitative methods and their analytical potential interesting, especially in surveys and such so this weeks theme suited me well. The workshop we had with Olle Bälter was really interesting due to its interactivity and student participation.

I have worked with the creation and design of web surveys before, so i´ve heard a lot already, but he still made a lot of valid points, like the possibilities to create intelligent surveys, which means that the following questions can be regulated by your answers from the earlier questions.

Another interesting point he made was the one of respondent value, that before creating a survey and distribution it you shall make an extensive matrix of all your different respondent groups, with a good overview of their different values so you know which one will provide the best data for analyzing purposes. I would also argue that this is one of the most common mistakes while creating a survey, people think it is enough to create a good survey and throw it on the internet without evaluating what groups to target through their distribution.

When I started working with web surveys I learned that you should always have an even number of answers, so that people can't take the a neutral standing and have to think it through (a neutral answear doesnt give us anything) This is affected by the surveys theme of course, you should give the respondents a neutral choice if the survey is of political standings or similar due to personal and democratic integrity, but you shouldn't if the survey is a course evaluation or similar. Well this is all my opinion, and what i learnt from Bälters workshop is that this choice isnt black or white, theres always different cases that needs different approaches to answer the specific question.

We also talked about the distribution of surveys, and their sustainable aspects when it came to the environmental, economical and social aspects. One curious thing is that web surveys aren't always more environmental friendly than paper surveys, that web surveys have a higher initial cost due to servers, software and similar expenses.

One economical difference between paper surveys and web surveys is that expanding the survey itself has a higher impact on the individual production cost of each paper survey due to its constant increase in weight, actual paper and ink that is being used. Similiar kind of expansion does not affect the web surveys in the long run.

One interesting thing is the application on different demographic groups. Can the results of a survey taken place in sweden represent the danish population due to the similarities between the countries? I believe that this is fully possible, as long as you mention this, so people can take this in remembrance, this provides the possibility to apply this to more controversial demographic groups, and maybe not use the data as a result itself, but rather for comparison.

One thing i have learned from working with web surveys is the fact of precision, simplicity and accuracy. Don't ask a question within a question, don't use unnecessary and extensive formulation, don't have complex questions and other traps. I got this confirmed today at the workshop, that a survey shall always be effective, easy to understand, evaluate each question before publishing it and most important of all, it should not be to long (depends on the matter at hand)

Arozin - Research and theory, reflection

Before this week, I thought I knew the definition of theory, or at least had a pretty good perception of it, but after this weeks lecture and seminar I realized that my definition of theory rather was the definition of a hypothesis.

During the seminar everyone in my group had almost the same definition of theory , with some slight changes and alterations. we draw the conclusion that a hypothesis is a link or a bridge that connects the theory and the empirical data.

In the beginning a theory is nothing but an observation of the behaviour of causal relationships, or an outcome based on nothing else but a hunch or a feeling. The hypothesis then tries to explain what is expected of the outcome and the accuracy of the theory by observing the theory, and the hypothesis gets proven or unproven by empirical data collected through a research, which proves or disproves the theory.

We later through the seminar discussed what theories are based upon, and we came to the conclusion that basicly, research is result of the chain of theory-hypothesis-data, but we later discussed if research can be the base to a theory. The overall consent was that theory can not be based on research but I beg to differ, because I think that research in one specific scientific area can be a vivid base of a scientific theory in another area. The research itself may not prove the validity of the created theory, but can be used to raise a question around it.

For example there has been a theory that claims that black holes does not exist, since the amount of radiation shed from a collapsing star surpasses the amount needed for creating a black hole, and the theorist bases this theory on the research of hawking radiation around the phenomena of the event horizon that surrounds a black hole. I would see this as a theory based on research in a similar field that has a connection to the area of the theory, but not the theory itself.

(http://www.iflscience.com/physics/physicist-claims-have-proven-mathematically-black-holes-do-not-exist)

We also discussed our different papers that we chose, whereas my paper had a theory that today's media companies and producers do not hold the same contextual power as they did decades ago due to the evolution of the internet, which gave individuals a greater freedom of speech.

The theory proved to be accurate after observing empirical data collected over the years, plus qualitative interviews of top shots in the media industry, but during the seminar we argued that maybe the internet is not as effective as we thought? We though this since a discussion on the internet lack some key values compared to a  discussion you have in person, such as feelings, impressions, and the behaviour of the participants. all this gets neglected in a discussion on the internet, which often leads to misinterpretations and unnecessary misunderstandings.

We thought of it as a wall, which everyone throw their opinions on, left it there and rarely reflected on others opinions on the wall.

This was a very hard drawn conclusion, and there is absolutely effective discussion on the internet, but we have to bear in mind what the digital world neglects us. Personally I think that internet is a modern way of expressing yourself, and it gives you an alternative, which makes it good democratic tool, but maybe it isn't as good as everyone think it is.

Arozin - Quantitative research

Regarding: the chosen paper, what methods they used, their limitations and benefits, what I learnt from reading the paper and the main methodological problems of the study.

I chose the paper Measuring Mobile Phone use: Self-Report Versus log Data by Jeffrey Boase and Rich Ling (2013) from the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication which has an impact factor of 1.778.

In this paper they use two different Quantitative methods, Self-Report and Log Data.

The main purpose of the Self-Report method is to let the research participants to log their mobile phone usage by themselves. In this particular research they measured two factors, frequency and duration. When it comes to frequency it specifies the number of text messages and phone calls that the respondent sent and received each day. When it comes to duration they asked the respondents to estimate the amount of time that they spend each day on using their device.  They crosschecked the results from the self reported data with log data acquired from four different phone operators, and estimated that the correlation between the self reported data and the billing data were moderately strong, they could therefore conclude that their self reported data were pretty accurate.

It must be considered that this study is mainly conducted on subjects residing in Norway, and it is possible that the behaviour of one specific demographic group cannot represent the behaviour of demographic groups in other countries.

Another problem is that the respondents may not be the only users of the phone, family and friends can also been using it, and their usage wont show in the subjects self report, but will be reflected in the log data collected which skews the results.

Another problem can be when it comes to self reporting of time, that the valuation may differ immensely, and won't be considered if u dont apply a statistical method that negates these effects.

In the paper there were three specific reasons to question the accuracy of the method: cognitive burden, social desirability and conceptual validity, which means that a respondent can subconsciously alter their behaviour when they try to recall it. That is if someone think they are a heavy or light mobile user, which will result in subjective answers, and the survey should therefore not include answers as “alot” or “moderate” but rather have time specific answers such as “two hours” or “five hours” to negate the subjective influence.

One way to solve the problems above can be to create a mobile application that logs the number of calls and their duration plus the number of texts and their sizees, and then sends the data to whoever makes the survey. This would make the data more accurate, but the problem with this method is the violation of the respondents integrity which should be overlooked before applying this kind of mobile application.

Quantitative methods are good when it comes down to measuring the general behaviour of a large demographic group. Its an effective way to collect data which u later on can analyse and draw different conclusions from, but you must always question the validity of its accuracy.

One effective way to evaluate the validity of data is to make a focus group that examines the data in a qualitative way.

Regarding: Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection, and the benefits, limitations and contemplations of quantitative and qualitative methods.

The benefits of using a quantitative method is that the data collected can represent the demographic population which is surveyed with a fairly accurate conclusion. You will also acquire different significant data which you can use to contemplate relationships and correlations between different data categories.

Qualitative methods are rather used when it comes to acquire specific knowledge of a specific area, and when contemplating a specialist or specific persons on the subject who can give you specific information. The problem with qualitative methods is that it does not provide the information that quantitative method does, which is the amount of data acquired to draw an overall conclusions that may represent a large demographic group.

another difference between the two is that quantitative methods provides the information to draw your own conclusion, where a qualitative method presents an answer that may or may not be subjective. I believe that a surveyor should use both methods to an extent, they contemplate each other since one method provides the data which the other does not.

This study was a good example of the use and application of a quantitative method, even though the subject itself did not relate to a subject in media technology as much as it did on epidemiology, it still had a relatively large pool of respondents to illustrate the usage and effectiveness of quantitative methods.

Arozin - Critical media studies, reflection

After this weeks lecture and seminar, I came to the conclusion that I had interpreted the assigned texts pretty good. but one thing that I had a hard time getting a grip of, was the term nominalism. But after the seminar, where we discussed it, I realized that I knew it’s meaning all along.

Nominalism only preserves what we see, and doesn't question that which is observed is a pretty harsh way of looking at something. I think that nominalism in it self is a bit useless, but when paired with other methods can be quite effective,especially when u start to questions something which you look upon.

Another thing we discussed during the seminar was the meaning and use of culture and if it have any revolutionary potentials. My group came to the conclusion that there are two different kinds of culture.

Firstly, we have aesthetic culture which is purely subjective. Culture such as music, arts, film lies within its boundaries, and have one thing in common, that someone else have created it, created its aura and meaning, and leaves very little room for the human mind to expand and build her own conclusions and define what she are observing.

Secondly we have what our group called societal culture, which is what outsiders define as our culture. It can be our political standings, our food culture, our educational system, everything and anything that define us as a community and society. The difference between aesthetical culture and societal culture as we saw it was that aesthetical culture were created for our consumption and to please the crowd, where societal culture were defined by others based on our actions, society and in some ways also our aesthetic culture.

I think culture have a revolutionary potential, both directly and indirectly, for example if you take a look on the James Bond and Indiana Jones movies from the sixties to the eighties, the villains were always the Soviets or the Nazis which, at the time, were enemies if the Americans, and therefore perceived as bad guys. Today the Nazis and Soviets equivalents are mainly terrorists from different part of the world, which are defined as the enemies of modern times.

This is an indirect way for the producers of culture and aesthetics to deliver an underlying message of the truth, or at least the truth as they see it.

Another thing I had a hard time with was understanding the difference between political aesthetics and aesthetic politics, but we came to a conclusion during the seminar. Political aesthetics were the usage of aesthetics and culture to show the society how it would look like. We compared to fascism and today's North Korea.

And why are this an important view on todays media? why should we as students and future Media engineers even bother to understand this?

Information is power, and with great power comes great responsibilities, and to create the future we have to know our past to avoid traps and dangers. We always have to criticize media and the usage of it, since it’s todays media that molds the perception and opinion of our society which is defined by others.

We also have to know the power that lies within the usage and creation of media and culture, to be able to detect dangers and threats when they appear.