Theme 3 - After

Reflections on Theme 3

The main theme this week was Quantitative methods. We had a lecture, a guest from a US University, and a computer lab. There was unfortunately some computer issues when we were to have the lab, but the program in question was installed on computers we have access to and I was able to briefly check it out a few days later.

We did at least get access to a tutorial powerpoint and had a brief introduction lecture before the lab, so I felt like I did at least get some basic insight into SPSS before trying it on my own.

The guest lecture earlier in the day was really interesting, it seemed like a very fitting person to hold the lecture - given her past and present research on the subject. It was focused on Quantitative methods but also touched upon mixed methods, which tied nicely into the texts we read as preparations before the week.

Looking at SPSS was interesting from a practical point of view. It’s good to learn a bit about how to use some statistical programs that are out there for when you start working on larger research projects (like the looming Master's Thesis). So SPSS is one of those, and appears to be in a leading position on the market in regards to how many companies apparently use it. We were told though that for a lot of applications Excel would suffice to do the work. For our Bachelor’s Thesis we used Google Docs' Excel-equivalent program to compose all the quantitative information we gathered (because the surveys we sent out were made in it - it seemed like the easy solution). Using Docs for this was a very hands on approach though, and took a lot of time because it was hard to automate some steps. Using SPSS for this in the future looks like it may spare a lot of time.

In hindsight I think I have picked up a bit more theoretical knowledge about Quantitative methods this week. And although I did already have some practical experience with it I would say playing with SPSS gave me a bit more practical knowledge as well.