You should write a 1000 word commentary in which you reflect about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions.
This will be my final blog post, where I will explain my learnings from the course as well as give some reflection about different ways of combining different methods in order to answer complex research questions. I would like to start by getting into the core of the question of why, I mean Why do we want to answer complex research questions in the first place? Well, I would say that it is because we want to collect new knowledge. This leads us to the following question, What is knowledge? In the beginning of the course we had a discussion about this question which I thought was quite difficult yet interesting. Difficult in the way that reading text by Kant and Plato and get hold of their philosophical way of thinking was very new to me and different from my previous courses on KTH where most of them are based on theoretical facts. However, during the discussion of what knowledge is we identified two different types of knowledge, from the perspective of Kant. One that is based on a priori way of collecting knowledge and another based on a posteriori way of collecting knowledge. The former, a priori, could be described as a knowledge that does not require any experience, i.e. an obvious knowledge that we just know is correct. While the latter, a posteriori, needs experience to confirm the knowledge. An interesting question here is whether the knowledge is really true in the sense that it is true to everyone, objective truth, or true to you, subjective truth. Since our perception is our way of interpreting the world I would argue that there is no such thing as a truly objective knowledge because the human perception is very much subjective. Another subjective factor is experience. For example, Socrates mentions that different people could see or hear different things even though they are watching the same picture or listening to the same song due to their previous experiences, which is something I personally agree with.
In order to answer complex research question, we rely on existing theories and build hypotheses. Research and Theory was another theme in this course where we discussed what theory is and what theory is not. The concept of theory and hypothesis is often mixed up and many people, me included, often defines the concepts as synonyms which certainly is not the case. Hypotheses are assumptions, i.e. unverified claims. Hypotheses are proposed theories or theories that are not proven or verified. From the hypothesis you build a theory by, for example, making observations or experiments. A theory, however, can at any time be reconsidered or rejected if it happens to be proven wrong. I would say that theories never can be definitive verified.
When the hypothesis is formed it is time to state which question to research as well as investigating the problem area. Investigating the problem area often means that the researcher examines what kind of problem it is, looking at previous studies in the same field and evaluate what kind of data is useful and accessible. The investigation is necessary and important in order to determine which research method to use for the study. Different studies require different research methods. During the course we have studied different ways of conducting research. It has been very helpful to carefully go through these methods, considering our coming master thesis. I would say that the focus has been on qualitative and quantitative research methods. The methods differs quite a lot regarding the collecting and processing of the data. Qualitative research methods are characterized by the in-depth knowledge of the problem area as well as a deeper understanding of why people think or feel in a specific way. When using qualitative methods it is easier to include the context of the study. Qualitative methods are often used in areas where there is no or poor knowledge beforehand. Qualitative methods are often used when the aim is to study questions of how and why. Quantitative methods, on the other hand, are often used when the aim is to study questions of what, when and who. Quantitative research rely on large amounts of data and for statistical use. The collected data are often easy to measure and analyze, as well as the easiness to compare and categorize the answers among the participants. The end result of studies using quantitative methods is often developed models and theories based on the results. In sum, quantitative research is to prefer when the aim is to find correlations in large amounts of data. Quantitative methods, however, lacks the ability to explain the reason for these correlations, in which qualitative methods is to prefer. With that being said, qualitative and quantitative methods are very good complements for each other. I think it is important to give the choice of method an extra thought. The choice of method is crucial in order to get the most out of the study. As mentioned before, different studies require different research methods.
During the course we also discussed case studies and design research. One of the advantages with case studies is that it allows you to study one very specific case. The case might be about a specific setting, or it might be about a specific phenomenon. Because the study is so specific the result will not be generalizable. For me, the non-existing generalization factor is what makes case studies intriguing. You can only say something about your specific case, due to the great possibility that the outcome would have differ with other participants and conditions. I think it is important that we sometimes try to understand one specific case rather than trying to determine how something works in every cases.
