Theme 4: Quantitative research

From IEEE MultiMedia volume 22, I choose the paper “A Survey of Current YouTube Video Characteristics” published by Xianhui Che in 2015. The paper studies YouTube videos to better understand their characteristics and to demonstrate consistency with previous research. In addition to this, the paper also presents new categories of features emerging. Due to Google's acquisition of YouTube in 2007, there has been some changes in user policy and service infrastructure. The choosen paper has an impact factor of 1.694.

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The paper depicts the latest YouTube traffic profiles and delivers updated and valuable information for future researchers with a customized Web spider which crawled over more than one million Videos. Crawling has been a popular methodology for collecting and characterizing YouTube videos. The authors compare different statistics with their own findings since these measurements present similar scopes of investigation, covering video categories and duration as well as file sizes.

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

Since this paper uses a different way to achieve quantity data using a web spider, I did not learn something about quantitative methods in general. The paper describes how the web spider works and what it did to collect metadata information from YouTube video content. Nevertheless, this “new” way of collecting data is interesting to me since it fits more to this research field than e. g. a questionnaire.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

Regarding the used method and the amount of collected data, I do not see a main methodological problems of the study. This paper can benefit telecommunication providers in the evaluation and estimation of cache usage in network services. Furthermore, methodological approach in form of a web spider can also be used to analyze similar levels of mass provision within digital media service. The only problem of the study might be the copyright and access issue which were justified by the authors.

One of the keywords in the text “Drumming in Immersive Virtual Reality: The Body Shapes he Way We Play” written by Konstantina Kilteni, Ilias Bergstrom, and Mel Slater is “Immersive Virtual Reality”. This term refers to transporting people to a virtual place where they experience events and take part in activities. This study focusses on the hypothesis if e.g. different skin colours have an impact on the person’s behaviour in the virtual reality. In this virtual reality, the users play African drums and see, instead of their own hands, the hands of a Caucasian formally dressed male or a dark-skinned casually dressed male. The study shows that using an avatar could indeed have influence on the behaviour.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods?

Quantitative methods describe the behaviour in the form of models, contexts and numerical expressions as accurately as possible. It will generally consist of a survey or observation of a possible large and representative random sample using methods such as a written survey questionnaires or a quantitative interview. These measured values are compared and put in relation to each other or with other variables. Afterwards the results then will be generalized to the population. Often a predetermined hypothesis is checked based on the data. The information gained is in quantitative methods in data reduction. In order to ensure equal conditions for the emergence of the measurements in a study, quantitative methods are usually fully standardized and structured, e.g. each respondent receives exactly the same conditions in answering the questions to make the statements of respondents comparable with each other. One limitation of using quantitative methods is that the cause of a finding or an attitude such as dissatisfaction is not determined.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative methods?

Compared to quantitative methods, the qualitative methods are characterized by much greater openness and flexibility. In the qualitative observation such as e. g. shadowing, there is just the subjectivity of the observed and the observer interesting. By doing so, a high content validity and a deeper information content of the results is achieved, without being able to make, however, representative and numerical statements. Qualitative methods are applied exploratory and hypothesis-that theorizing is gradual and will be further developed during the investigation. The aim of qualitative research is to map the reality based on the subjective view of the relevant conversation. A limitation of using qualitative methods is that they are relatively time consuming and costly. The requirements for the qualification of the interviewer / observer are quite high, the quality of data is to some extent also dependent on it. The evaluation is relatively expensive, especially when compared to the quantitative methods. Furthermore for qualitative data, you cannot derive any numerical quantities.