Written by Redwan
16 May 2016
Soooo…! Time to put on that nerd cap again. 😀
Yah, so I have been extremely involved into my thesis for the past couple of weeks that even when I consider pen-ing down a blog post, all that goes around in my head is ‘research, research and research’! So my topic of thesis is kind of interesting (according to me of course!). I have been delving into the realm of innovation resistance and seeing how and why people do not tend to use any new technology that comes into the market. There are pre-assumed conceptions that anything new and innovative is good and should be readily acceptable, to which certain researchers disagree. Though much study has not been conducted in the field of resistance, I thought it might be a good idea to choose a topic which is different and not commonly addressed. Hence, I researched into the context of mobile-banking and studied Bangladeshi students’ resistance towards using it.
However, when you do a thesis, it is extremely important to be very clear about the approach you wish to take in order to complete your work. That is one of the main learning of a Master level thesis. It teaches you to understand the mechanisms of research, how to go about it, read and reflect and argue about your findings. Mainly there are 2 types of research you can do – qualitative and quantitative. So today I will talk briefly on them, hoping that it may also help you do your thesis or any sort of research activity that you may be involved in.
Qualitative, as the word itself suggest, is to do with texts and words. Means, the research that one conducts under this methodology is very descriptive in nature. In qualitative research, a researcher must have some strength in digging deeper into the words and meanings and handling a lot of textual data, depending on the topic. There are usually no short cut formulae or a certain way to do this. It is usually quite extensive in nature and one must always try to get more texts, words and information when gathering these data. More of these will simply make the work of higher quality and gain a lot of weight, simply due to the sheer amount of information one has got. This adds to the authenticity factor as well where readers would find the research work reliable and sees the results has implementable. Talking about gathering the data, methods that you can use typically under qualitative research is interviews, focus groups, case studies, inspiration cards and many more.
Quantitative, as you might have guessed, is much to do with numbers and facts rather than words and texts. The approach that a researcher takes in this sort of work is using lots of different types of statistical formulae and graphs that help them to reach a conclusion. There are many modes and types of calculations that are available and it depends highly on the type of method and aim the researcher is trying to achieve. I have not conducted quantitative research myself and thus, do not have much of an insight but it can surely be of your interest if you wish to conduct your research through surveys for instances. They often give you a solid basis of your argumentation because they are backed by mathematical models and properly calculated figures, making it an interesting way to research.
Happy thesis-ing or research-ing! 😀
