The paper I have chosen is “The growth of TV
news, the demise of the journalism profession” which
is published under ‘Media Culture and Society’ journal. Five year impact factor
is 1.295
Written by Carey L.
Higgins-Dobney and Gerald Sussman (2013)
This study shows the critical literature on the
transformation of local news ownership structure and the impacts of
technological reorganization of news production on the television profession
and local communities. This study looks at the underlying political economy on
local news production and focuses specifically on the labor conditions of
newsroom personnel. For this purpose, this study used some quantitative methods
based on surveys.
Which quantitative method or methods
are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these
methods?
One method used in this study is ‘Collecting the
empirical data’, the benefit of this method is that it’s fast and results are
able to be confirmed and all the observations are based on evidence. For example,
one observation to confirm that what the media industry calls ‘the one-man band’
– journalists who conduct the interview, shoot, edit, and report the story for
air and post it to the web. More than 30% of news directors nationally said
they mostly used ‘one-man-bands’ to cover the news in 2009, perhaps more
telling is that less than one in five said they do not use solo journalists, a drop
of 35% from three years earlier. Almost 43% said the use of one-man-bands
altered the way stations were willing to hire (Paper, 2011). So through these
data, we can easily see that how ‘one-man band’ growing in media industry but
on the other hand the number don’t show how and why so I think that this is
limitation.
After gathering the data, this paper shows the
analysis of data by using table ‘cross-media
ownership of Portland’s commercial TV companies’.
What did you learn about quantitative
methods from reading the paper?
The objective of quantitative
research is to develop and employ numerical data, theories or hypothesis pertaining to phenomena by using
computational and statistical techniques. The process of measurement is central to quantitative research
because it provides the fundamental connection between empirical observation and mathematical expression of
quantitative relationships. Such
as in this paper they came up with some questions to find best possible answers
or to reach to any conclusion. For this purpose, they collected data in numbers
by using quantitative approach, so they can compare the results and answer the
questions.
Which are the main methodological
problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods
have been improved?
I think as
this study used the method of collecting and analyzing the empirical data, this
approach is observable, even though you can find some results still it can only
show limited results in a specific duration of time. For example, the data were
collected in time duration 2002 --- 2009 and paper was published in 2013 so
results can be different in current situation. Quantitative methods have
undoubtedly contributed to the wider acceptance but it can be fruitful if it is
used prescriptively.
“Physical activity, stress, and
self-reported upper respiratory tract infection”
Which are the benefits and
limitations of using quantitative methods?
The main
benefit of quantitative research is that it provides descriptive data —for example, allowing us to capture a snapshot of a
user population by using statistical approach and in this way you can study in
wider perspective. Also statistical analysis lets us derive important facts
from research data, including preference trends, differences between groups and
demographics. It may have higher credibility
with many people in power. Quantitative methods are less time consuming, for
example you can use software for statistical analysis and mathematical formulas
to compute results.
The limitation is that the descriptive data is
problematic when it comes to interpretation, as it can provide a numerical data
but cannot provide the crucial information to interpret the data. The
researcher might miss out the phenomena occurring because of more focus on
testing the hypothesis rather than on theory. One limitation is that the knowledge
produced might be too abstract and general as data obtained from local
situation, contexts and individuals.
Which are the benefits and
limitations of using qualitative methods?
The great
benefit of qualitative research that it can provide you details about human
behavior, thoughts and personality characteristics that quantitative studies
cannot match. Qualitative
data provides a rich, detailed picture to be built up about why people act in
certain ways, and their feelings about these actions.
The limitation of qualitative method is that the
researcher collects data about the specific group of participants so you cannot
necessarily use this data to make assumptions. Also its time consuming and this
study is not so easy.
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