Mass Media Research: Qualitative v. Quantitative
Interest in mass media research has only increased over the years. While mass media has been a disciple of study for decades, the introduction of the internet has only driven the study of mass media more and more. Studying mass media is also a study of human behavior.
Human behavior is difficult to research. Where chemists, biologists, and physicists have tools to measure and record findings, social scientists don’t have tools to precisely measure a characteristic such as ‘motivation’ or ‘anxiety,’ or ‘political awareness.’
This is where the qualitative and quantitative research methods come in. Qualitative research is based on personal observations, interviews, and texts that are interpreted by the researcher’s own ideas and logic. This type of research is based on feelings and personal interpretation rather than facts and figures. Quantitative research is the opposite. Quantitative research is based on numerically stated values of observed data.
These two styles of research tend to guide human behavior studies in the mass media concentration. While one style might work best for certain instances, the other style works better for other instances. Research should be purposeful and designed to best suit the data being researched. Let’s explore two cases, one using the quantitative research style and one using the qualitative research style.
Quantitative Research Style
Steven Stack’s study on the effect of suicide stories in the media on suicide in the real world used quantitative research. Stacks applied logistic regression techniques to 419 findings from 55 studies. He found that stories involving an entertainment or political celebrity were 5.27 times more likely to find a copycat effect, stories that stressed negative definitions of suicide were 99% less likely to report a copycat effect, television stories were 79% less likely to find a copycat effect and studies focusing on female suicide were 4.89 times more likely to report a copycat effect than other studies. While Stack mentions that there are inconsistencies with most studies involving the media’s effect on suicide, his research proves that there is a correlation depending on the context of the media and the audience's mood. The audience's mood can be defined as age, gender, or emotion of the audience.
Qualitative Research Style
As mentioned earlier, the data collected in qualitative research is normally gathered from interviews, personal experiences, and texts. Disadvantaged Parents’ Engagement with a National Secondhand Smoke in the Home Mass Media Campaign: A Qualitative Study, is a study conducted in Scotland that involved 17 interviews with parents before and after the Scottish 2014 “Right Outside” mass media campaign. The study was conducted to see how secondhand smoke mass media campaigns affect disadvantaged families. While the study concluded that mass media campaigns using emotive, real-life circumstances can be effective in engaging parents about SHS. However, the behavioral impact may be limited because of difficult home environments and circumstances, the study also criticized its sample size.
The sample group that was interviewed provided the studies with some limitations. For example, Scotland has had comprehensive smoke-free public places’ legislation since 2006, so the findings may not be generalizable to countries with less comprehensive, or more recent, smoke-free legislation. Focusing the study in Scotland may not be generalizable to the wider population of parents who smoke in other countries and cultures. The campaign and the study used a conceptual framework to create meaningful connections with the participants, however, many of the participants could not relate to the context of the media. Even with these limitations, most of the participants felt guilty and felt encouraged to act to protect their children from secondhand smoke.
Conclusion
Research styles should be chosen depending on what data is desired from the study. Where Stacks was able to find clear, defined data backed up by numbers and logic, the study on the secondhand smoke campaign was able to accurately collect data on a smaller scale based on emotions and feelings. Personally, the quantitative research style seems to resonate more. We can interpret numerical data to fit the research we’re conducting. With numerical data to back up our assumptions, it is easier to answer the original question.
Conducting qualitative research does not seem as accurate and credible. In the example above, the results of the study were only relevant to the neighborhoods the 17 parents resided in. Conducting the same study on a larger scale in different cities or countries can generate different results.
