Sem 4

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

The paper I have read this week is called “Prevalence and determinants of Internet addiction among adolescents”(Adiele & Olatokun 2014), and it used quantitative data to examine their hypotheses. After going thru others theory and claimed that they did some research design to create surveys they made a survey-based study. Thiers surveys contain an Internet addiction test (IAT) and “EPQR-S lie scale”. The Internet addiction test is a test developed from previous studies, and “EPQR-S lie scale” is a way to see if the participants are potential liars. EPQR-S lie scale contains “yes an no” questions that most of the people will answer “yes” on, if they tell the truth. Its questions like “have you ever made your parents disappointed?” or “have you ever cheated in a game?” If a participant says “no” on too many questions, that participant will be seems as a potential liar, and the survey from that participant will be claimed as invalid. Could be a smart thing, but I don’t know for sure how well it works.

It could be good to have the kind of test as previous studies, because its more easy to compare the results from other studies, it is even possible to merge different studies to a big study, if the participants from different studies get the same question. Limitation with surveys is that it hard to get details from the participants, and thing that happens unconsciously.

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper? 

The opportunity to find out if someone is a potential liar on a survey is something I never heard of before. Even if I don’t know how well it works, it’s something that I find really interesting and something worth to look further into. I do think it’s common that people try to avoid the truth on surveys, even if the participants are anonymous. If a participants is example shamed about something, I don’t think everybody tell that on a survey.

This is also the first time I read a paper where the authors take a test that already exist, and not developed a new one for there own purposes (even if they modify some questions little for more clarification). It could, as I said be a smart think to do, if the test is good enough for the current study, because the possibility to compare or merge it with other studies.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

I think the paper in some way failed in use of the quantitative method, because it’s important to show all calculations right, and data in an understandable way. My biggest problem is that I claimed that some calculation is wrong (maybe careless mistakes) witch make the study less credibility.  Like the meaning “ left the current study with a final sample of 450 adolescents of both sexes (47.42% males and 50.17% females).” Makes me we wonder what the rest 2.41% are, shouldn’t males plus females be summed up to 100%

Another meaning is “However, females 950%)”, they maybe mean “(50%)” but I don’t know for sure. They also have bigger error, that I don’t have place for write about here, but thanks to the bad calculations and the contradictions in the paper I think the whole paper lack of credibility. However, when statistics is the result from a study, I think it’s very important to make sure that everything is shown in a good and correct way,

Short about the text “Physical Activity, Stress, and Self-Reported Upper Respiratory Tract Infection”.

I think it was a good text that structured data in a clear way. I thought about how people (specially men) were less stressed when there was a high physical activity (many MET-hour/day). For me it’s true, but when I don’t have time for training, I have probably much in school, work etc. and therefore stressed. When I find more free time, I will train and be less stressed, most because I have less to do from school and work.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

Lot of data is obtained, and it’s easer to make generalizations. It’s a good way to get lots of data in short time, on things that people could easily answer in a survey for example.   However details like things that people do unconsciously are hard to catch.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Benefits are that details are easier to detect. Here you can get people’s opinions as well, in focus grope or something similar. Another method is case study, which could have more observations than a survey ever will have. However, it’s time consuming and therefore difficult to do it many times, and hard to do generalizations.

Adiele, I. & Olatokun, W., 2014. Prevalence and determinants of Internet addiction among adolescents. Computers in Human Behavior, 31(0), pp.100–110. Available at: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563213003786.