Pre Seminar 4 (Workshop)

Theme 4: Quantitative research

Journal: New media & society 2014 
Impact Factor: 2.052 
Paper: A socio-economic exploration of mobile phone service have-nots in Sweden

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The methods used is information gathering through questionnaires. The authors have taken advantage of an annual survey by the Swedish Post and Telecom Agency from 2008 to 2010. This survey was distributed to 4000 respondents in Sweden between the age of 16 and 75 by both web and mail. The original questionnaire had the purpose of providing information about the market from a consumer perspective, the respondents were asked to provide information on their socio-economic and demographic background as well as responses related to usage of telecommunication services, includ- ing fixed phone, Internet and mobile phone. The authors have then used a part of this information to analyse which the factors that can be generalised for users that don't own a mobile phone.

The benefits from this method is that first of all they didn't have to do the survey themselves which saved a lot of time. By using already collected data they could focus on the analyse. Otherwise they would have to wait at least three years before they could se anything of value. They also got a quite large pool of respondents since the Post and Telecom Agency have a wide reach. The use of annual surveys gives a stronger base for projections for the future.

The limitations of using an already conducted survey is that you can't ask the exact questions you want. You are forced to deal with the material you got and there might be something missing that you could have found if you were conducting the survey yourself. This study also gives no deeper insight in WHY people don't use mobile phones only which demographic factors that effect the case. So technically we can't draw so many conclusions from just this particular research. 


What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?
That you can take advantage of already existing surveys even if they don't exactly was created for your research purpose you might be able to extract useful information which you can analyse.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?
Since the purpose of the original study wasn't to see which people didn't use mobile phones they don't get enough useful information about the ones that are "have-nots" (don't use mobile phones). If that would have been the original purpose they could've asked more questions about the reasons for not using a phone and with the same questionnaire they could've gotten much more and richer data. So by doing a survey that only focus on these have-nots they could get more useful results that can be used to draw deeper conclusions.

1. Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

Benefits:

• Strenghts in numbers, from a series of test or questionnaires research will often yield data that's projectable to a larger population.
• Becuase of its basis in numbers, data can easily be transformed into quantifiable charts and graphics.
• "Bigger is better"

Limitations:

• Large samples of data are required which can be hard to gather. 
• Large samples can be expensive to collect.
• Not so flexible, you often go for a type of test and stick with it.
• The short nature of a quantitative test makes it sensetive for statistical errors

2. Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Benefits:

•  Looks beyond the percentages to gain an understanding of the participants feelings, impressions and viewpoints.
• Rich in-depth resluts with insight unobtainable from quantitative market research techniques.
• Flexible, highly-focused and designed to be completed quickly
• "Size doesn't matter"

Limitations:

• Since the analysis is subjective and deals with a small sample size, projectability is not possible to a larger scale. 
• Won't provide reaserchers with definitive conclusions, only with enough information to establish a basic understanding that can be further investigated.
• Trained moderators are essential to the success of qualitative research. Placed in the hands of an untrained moderator, a qualitative research study's chance of success is vastly diminished.