Qualitative vs Quantitative
The first article I picked dealt with body dissatisfaction in adolescents. They collected data through qualitative research, which involves collecting and analyzing non-numerical data.
The article goes on to collect data through focus groups from 7th and 8th grade. Out of six groups, five of the groups mentioned how they weren’t happy with their bodies. One participant shared, “Like I know sometimes I’ll look at pictures and it’ll make me feel like not happy with myself cause sometimes I’ll wanna look like them.”
Body dissatisfaction is something that everyone struggles with, whether they admit it or not, and because of social it’s making it harder for people to be content with what they look like.
I think the way they collected data by asking girls in focus groups was genius because t gave them a chance to dig in deeper and ask follow-up questions.
The second article I took a look at is about the spread of fake news on social media. In this article, they use quantitative research, which is the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data.
This journal goes on to talk about how detrimental social media can be to the medical field. People tend to believe a lot of things that pop up on their feed without doing the research behind them. They share it, and it keeps on getting passed around.
In the journal it shares some important details like in the top ten shared links about cancer; five of them are fake news, and they’ve gotten over 200,00 in shares and engagement. Another topic the journal looked at was vaccination, and nine of the top ten articles were fake. It had over 100,000 shares and engagement.
Comparing both qualitative and quantitative, I think both research methods are useful and valuable. I like the quantitative research method better because it’s just straight-up facts. I think numerical data is more reliable. I feel like qualitative is more opinion-based.