EDU 508 Qualitative studies

Qualitative studies

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Social media has changed life and living the way we knew. Very few people will disagree that social networking sites such as facebook and twitter have been a great source of help to both academic and professional purposes. Facebook has a had a great impacts on people of all walks of life but more so on college students because this is the segment of the population that is known to use it most. One qualitative study done on this topic is, ‘The Effects of Social Media on College students’ written by Wei Chieng,Yu Liang and Quingya Wang. One of the findings of this study that online communities such a facebook groups can be used to provide academic assistance and support due to enhanced connections that come with facebook (Lusk,2010) this is in agreement with another quantitative study; ‘Facebook and academic performance: reconciling a media sensation with data’. This is written by Josh Pasek, Eian more, and Eszter Hargittai.This study found out that there is no relationship between facebook and grade point average. Infact,it is clear that facebook use is common among high performers.

However, Wang et al (The Effects of Social Media on College students) also found that the use of facebook can have a negative impact on academic performance especially for students who use facebook while in class or when doing assignment. This kind of multitasking has been proven to have a negative impact on academic performance because they also encourage procrastination when it comes to homework. This findings are in sharp contrast to the study done by Pasek et al that suggests that there is no relationship between academic and use of facebook.

The key difference in the manner the findings have been written between the quantitative and the qualitative articles is that while the qualitative research is largely exploratory and it focuses on providing insight into the problem under study and the writings are done in that format while the quantitative study is concerned with numerical data. There is a lot of data presented that quantifies opinions and other defined variables in the study.

Reference

Lusk, B. (2010). Digital natives and social media behaviors: An overview. Prevention Researcher, 173-6

Pasek, J., more, e., & Hargittai, E. (2009). Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data. First Monday, 14(5). http://ojs-prod-lib.cc.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/2498/2181

Wang, Q., Chen, W., Liang, Y. (2011). The Effects of Social Media on College Students. MBA Student Scholarship. Paper 5 http://scholarsarchive.jwu.edu/mba_student.