Applied Media Research-Qualative Research

Introduction

Today was the first session of one of our new modules; Applied Media Research. In this semester we will be learning about Qualitative Research and what the methods of these are so we can then use these to answer three questions that will be set by three different people in the media industry. 

What is Qualitative Research?

Qualitative research is finding the answer to a question or finding a solution to a problem by using different techniques to gather an understanding of peoples behavior. This is done by

• Formulating qualitative research questions
• In-depth interviews
•  Focus group discussions
•  Observation

 What we did

To practice some Qualitative Research techniques we got into groups and came up with a method to learn how people felt about their university course. We came up with the method to write a letter to your younger self about advise on going to university and gave this to a group of 5 people and then collected these in and came up with a conclusion to our question.

What we found out

We found out that people would advise their younger self to go to university and put as much work in as possible and from this we learned that the technique enables people to be more open about their opinions.

My reflection

I found this session to be very interesting as I learned a lot about how useful Qualitative Research can be through the use of the letters we asked people to produce, which enabled them to be more open about their university experiences due to the fact they were telling their younger self. This meant that they had the chance to think more honestly about their university experience as they would begin to think about their future, meaning they would most probably want this to be a positive experience. If we had just simply asked them to write down their thoughts on their experience now at university I think we would have received a very different set of answers because they would only be focusing on their thoughts and feelings now, which may or may not come into effect because of the persons mood.

I will definitely use more creative techniques like this as I think it really helps in understanding the behavior of people, giving more of an opportunity for better answers.

See you soon!