Quantitative research

Introduction A mobile application has the potential to involve people with chronic NSLBP in their rehabilitation. To refine the design of a smartphone application for people with chronic NSLBP using mixed quantitative and qualitative approaches. Methods We used a user-centred design approach involving people with chronic NSLBP and healthcare professionals (HCPs). We used a three-step methodology: developing consensus on the features, content, and design of the app; developing a user interface; and usability testing of the app and assessing users’ experience. Transcripts of interviews of users were analyzed by qualitative content analysis. Results A total of 18 people (aged 45 [23–53] years old) with chronic NSLBP, and 7 HCPs (aged 29.5 [25–55] years old) involved in NSLBP management were interviewed. The overall experience of using the smartphone eLombactif app was initially assessed. Then, with close-ended questions we evaluated users’ judgements on the content, its presentation and navigation. Finally, we asked for suggestions: “application content and functionality” and “content presentation” from participants regarding the use and development of the app analyzed by a qualitative methodology. Conclusions This study described how we refined the design of our application for people with chronic NSLBP using a qualitative and quantitative approaches. This methodology allows for deepening the knowledge of the needs and expectations of potential users by measuring their user experience. IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION Non-specific low back pain (NSLBP) is a major global public health issue leading to considerable economic cost and is primarily responsible for pain and disability. Mobile application has the potential to involve people with chronic NSLBP in their rehabilitation. This study described how we refined the design of our application for people with chronic NSLBP using a qualitative and quantitative approaches.

In this paper, we introduce a project on singles’ intimate practices conducted during COVID times as a case study of quantitative social research with a particular focus on qualitative reflections. We thematize the topic of self-reflexivity, which is considered an essential category in qualitative research but largely neglected in quantitative research. We discuss three methodological issues through the lens of self-reflection: ‘translation issues’; the problems of asking ‘sensitive’ and the ‘right’ questions; and the problematics of ‘the present’ in particularly fluid times. We show that this approach promotes contextualization of the measurement tool, the data and the findings and can be a way for doing quantitative research on intimacy outside the ‘standard’ nuclear family in pandemic times. Overall, this paper underscores the ways that scholars as individuals and teams are inextricable from our research site, as we navigate disruption even while seeking to understand its implications on our informants.

In this final chapter, we will turn our attention to research planning, research design and the writing up of a research project. More specifically, we consider one of the perennial issues with any type of complex applied research; that of how to co-ordinate and integrate multiple research procedures within a single research study, where this issue is addressed at the stages of research design, research project management and establishing coherence in a research project write-up. In an attempt to achieve these ends we will present facet theory and its major tool the mapping sentence as being appropriate for achieving the aforementioned aims. Several forms of the mapping sentence will be offered including, the research design mapping sentence, the project planning mapping sentence and the declarative mapping sentence as being appropriate in the management and design of complex quantitative consumer psychological research. Moreover, in this final chapter we will attempt to both unite and conclude the writing in the previous chapters and to provide a framework for researchers to use to bring together their quantitative research projects in a coherent manner that does not impose an artificial structure upon their research design, writing and conclusions. We suggest that in order to provide such a framework or template for integrating research findings, the mapping sentence is an especially appropriate template for facilitating coherence within quantitative consumer psychological research as it offers structure to the research in a flexible manner that does not impose a pre-supposed format on research findings. We commence our writing by noting how there are many quantitative research approaches that may be used in a consumer psychology research project, the contents of this book being an excellent example of these. There is also a vast amount of quantitative data (or data that can be analysed quantitatively) extant on the Internet and in other repositories. Whether a particular research project has employed a single research method or has brought multiple methods together to answer a research question, a framework is needed to design, integrate and interpret the findings from these studies. This is obviously more of an issue when multiple research approaches or tools (such as online data and a primary data experiment) are used in a single research study. Therefore, in this final chapter we conclude by offering a framework for co-coordinating and unifying research projects. At the end of the chapter, we include exercises, the completion of which is aimed to consolidate learning of the chapter's content.

Quantitative and qualitative research explore various social phenomena using different methods. However, there has been a tendency to treat quantitative studies using complicated statistical techniques as more scientific and superior, whereas relatively few qualitative studies have been conducted in the medical and healthcare fields. This review aimed to provide a proper understanding of qualitative research. This review examined the characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research to help researchers select the appropriate qualitative research methodology. Qualitative research is applicable in following cases: (1) when an exploratory approach is required on a topic that is not well known, (2) when something cannot be explained fully with quantitative research, (3) when it is necessary to newly present a specific view on a research topic that is difficult to explain with existing views, (4) when it is inappropriate to present the rationale or theoretical proposition for designing hypotheses, as in quantitative research, and (5) when conducting research that requires detailed descriptive writing with literary expressions. Qualitative research is conducted in the following order: (1) selection of a research topic and question, (2) selection of a theoretical framework and methods, (3) literature analysis, (4) selection of the research participants and data collection methods, (5) data analysis and description of findings, and (6) research validation. This review can contribute to the more active use of qualitative research in healthcare, and the findings are expected to instill a proper understanding of qualitative research in researchers who review qualitative research reports and papers.

Subjective perceptual methods for comparing backpacks in the field

A quantitative physicochemical approach to ion relations of biological solutions is presented, which applies fundamental laws of physical chemistry to these systems and allows analysis of dependent variables ([H+], [OH−] and the dissociation state of partially dissociated ('weak') ions including carbonate species) in relation to independent variables (concentrations of strong and weak ions, dissociation constants and CO2 partial pressure). Within this concept the influence of strong (fully dissociated) ions is confined to their net unbalanced positive charge which is referred to as SID (strong ion difference). The SID concept is then applied to membrane transport processes and ion relations of xylem and phloem sap: simple transmembrane transport of protons between compartments cannot affect pH on either side of the membrane, because rather small deviations from electrical neutrality results in substantial changes of the membrane potential under natural conditions. Thus the membrane ATPases as electrogenic pumps cannot control the pH of adjacent compartments, but they energize secondary active transmembrane ion transport that results in pH changes. The SID approach is shown to be valid by matching pH values calculated from analysis of xylem and phloem saps with actual measured values. Sensitivity analysis based on the SID approach allows (1) to detect inconsistency in determination of composition in the analysed solutions and (2) quantitatively to analyse the influence of ion export or import and variations of pCO2 on pH and dissociation state of weak acids of complex biological solutions. The SID concept thus allows the evaluation of the contribution of a proposed pH-regulating or pH-affecting mechanism on a quantitative physico-chemical basis.

Digestive disorders rank among the most common problems faced in Indonesia, especially for the Baduy people in Banten Province. Although the Baduy live in water-rich areas, their lack of sanitation facilities and unawareness of methods of disease prevention have prompted high morbidity and mortality rates in their communities, largely due to digestive system disorders that they continue to treat with medicinal plants. This survey was undertaken to document Baduy indigenous medicinal plants that were used to treat and prevent different types of digestive system disorders in their communities using quantitative ethnobotanical approaches. Ethno medicinal data were collected from 30 informants regarding their knowledge on medicinal plants. Quantitative approaches were used to determine the use value and informant consensus factor values of collected data. The results revealed that the Baduy currently use 54 medicinal plant species belonging to 30 families to treat digestive system disorders. Additional research is required, however, to validate the function of the medicinal plants and identify their active compounds.

In prognostics and health management, the prediction capability of a prognostic method refers to its ability to provide trustable predictions of the remaining useful life, with the quality characteristics required by the related maintenance decision making. The prediction capability heavily influences the decision makers’ attitude toward taking the risk of using the predicted remaining useful life to inform the maintenance decisions. In this article, a four-layer, top-down, hierarchical decision-making framework is proposed to assess the prediction capability of prognostic methods. In the framework, prediction capability is broken down into two criteria (Layer 2), six sub-criteria (Layer 3) and 19 basic sub-criteria (Layer 4). Based on the hierarchical framework, a bottom-up, quantitative approach is developed for the assessment of the prediction capability, using the information and data collected at the Layer-4 basic sub-criteria level. Analytical hierarchical process is applied for the evaluation and aggregation of the sub-criteria and support vector machine is applied to develop a classification-based approach for prediction capability assessment. The framework and quantitative approach are applied on a simulated case study to assess the prediction capabilities of three prognostic methods of the literature: fuzzy similarity, feed-forward neural network and hidden semi-Markov model. The results show the feasibility of the practical application of the framework and its quantitative assessment approach, and that the assessed prediction capability can be used to support the selection of the suitable prognostic method for a given application.

This study aimed at: 1) investigating the move and steps found in quantitative and qualitative research articles discussion; 2) investigating the rhetoric structure patterns of quantitative and qualitative research article discussion. This study is a qualitative-research focusing on genre analysis on qualitative and quantitative RA discussions. There were 20 qualitative and 20 quantitative research article discussions of EFL and applied linguistics journals were investigated in this research. Using Yang & Allison’s (2003) framework to analyze the data, it is found that all moves in the framework were employed in RA discussion of both qualitative and quantitative research. However, the number of occurrences of each move were different between discussion section of these two different approaches. Furthermore, the patterns of both qualitative and quantitative RA discussion was not significantly different. There were two types of patterns in RA discussion both in qualitative and quantitative, repetitive pattern and organized pattern. although there were some variations in each of those patterns. The present study provides more evidence of generic structure of RA discussion section as well as proposes some useful insights related to move analysis on research article discussion in ELT and Linguistics area. Limitations and recommendations are discussed in this study.

For over twenty years Charles C. Ragin has been at the forefront of the development of innovative methods for social scientists. In "Redesigning Social Inquiry", he continues his campaign to revitalize the field, challenging major aspects of the conventional template for social science research while offering a clear alternative."Redesigning Social Inquiry" provides a substantive critique of the standard approach to social research - namely, assessing the relative importance of causal variables drawn from competing theories. Instead, Ragin proposes the use of set-theoretic methods to find a middle path between quantitative and qualitative research. Through a series of contrasts between fuzzy-set analysis and conventional quantitative research, Ragin demonstrates the capacity for set-theoretic methods to strengthen connections between qualitative researchers' deep knowledge of their cases and quantitative researchers' elaboration of cross-case patterns. Packed with useful examples, "Redesigning Social Inquiry" will be indispensable to experienced professionals and to budding scholars about to embark on their first project.

Summary form only given. Conceptual Models are developed on the basis of established theories and tested by quantitative business management research to explore behavioral and social constructs and their relationships. These identified constructs in quantitative research have not been captured through knowledge management tools such as ontological representations defined in computer science, which is often used in the design and development of enterprise software, social networks, search engines, and even research repositories of medical sciences. This study is focused on developing an ontological representation of conceptual models by integrating the behavioral and social constructs and their relationships, which are already established in quantitative business management researches.

What counts as “good” quantitative research and what can we say about when to use quantitative and/or qualitative methods?

Quantitative methods are an important component of peace research, since many of the issues addressed are inherently quantitative - the frequency and intensity of conflict, or the determination of military expenditures, for instance. This article argues that quantitative peace research could be improved if authors put more emphasis on the substantive issues and less on the mechanical application of rule-based, statistical techniques. After some methodological discussion, seven questions are posed that quantitative researchers might ask themselves; an attempt is made to show why these questions are important. If quantitative peace researchers asked themselves these questions more often, the substantive contribution of quantitative peace research could be increased.

In the era of big data, linguistic studies with quantitative methods have gained momentum. Ever since the approval of the project ‘Quantitative Linguistic Research of Contemporary Chinese’ in 2011, the research group led by Professor Haitao Liu has continued to investigate quantitative features of Chinese texts as well as other languages from four aspects, that is, quantitative research on a lexical level, on a syntactic level, and on other levels like phonemic, discourse, and semantic levels, as well as quantitative research based on the complex network approach. This group aims to explore universal laws of all languages while still paying attention to differences across different languages. In this project report, the main research papers published in the past five years are reviewed. Through these studies, we can find that the quantitative method has attracted the attention of Chinese linguists.

This chapter provides a comprehensive, in-depth discussion of quantitative research methods in ISLA. It starts by informing the reader of the basic elements and principles of quantitative ISLA research and the major research questions examined. It then identifies three categories of ISLA research: experimental, correlational, and observational, followed by a discussion of the methods for evaluating the quality of quantitative research from the perspectives of construct validity, internal validity, external validity, and statistical conclusion validity. The chapter proceeds to offer advice for future researchers on how to carry out original and robust quantitative research and propose strategies to address common methodological issues. A conclusion is offered at the end.