fsmt475 week 6 forum responses

#1

It is crazy to think that we are into week 6 of class. It is flying by so fast and before we know it we will be in week 8. For this week we were asked to answer the questions. The purpose of each of the following: quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods research methods. Which do you feel is best for your proposed research topic?  Can you identify which method were used by researchers in the articles you are reading? Quantitative research is the planned, empirical investigation that aims to gain a deep understanding of a specific organization or event, rather than to compile a surface description of a large sample of a population via measurement. Qualitative research is the systematic, empirical investigation of social phenomena using statistical, mathematical or computational techniques. Mixed methods research is a planned investigation for collecting, analyzing, and “mixing” both quantitative and qualitative research and methods in a single study in order to understand a research problem from multiple perspectives. Each of these have their own place in research and one is not better then the other. Just one could be used or two or all three together. I fell that the mixed method is best for my research topic because it allows me to use both methods. For fire research it can be planned and also needs to be systemic. There have been many planned research events for modern fire behavior, it is a a hot topic and research are trying to find out everything they can about it. I think that the researchers in my articles that I have been reading used Quantitative methods because they had to plan to find houses and get the furniture to perform all of the modern fire behavior and planned to have the firefighters apply what they know for research. Good luck to everyone and everything due this week.

#2

The debate between quantitative, or statistical, analysis and qualitative, contextual, analysis is very interesting to me. For one, I believe it also describes how many people think. Some people are very statistical, left brain, or they are very contextual, right brain, people. Neither is wrong, but some times one is better suited for different situations (Cherry, 2019). Personally, I am a very left brain type person. I am into statistics and numbers, and I tend to lean towards research that is very statistical. For my topic, Traditional versus Transitional Fire Attack, I will use a lot of the number data to try to prove my points. I will look at the heat measured inside, and the time it takes to extinguish the fire, and other types of data along these lines. 

Now, the quantitative research will tell me what is happening inside a fire. It will tell me the mass of the fire, and the BTUs being produced, but it does not explain why this is happening. “when the focus of a quantitative researcher on the compliance with the statistical rules leads to the omission of qualitative aspects of analyses phenomenon…a simple quantitative estimate of the number of faulty machined products is just an ascertainment; only a qualitative analysis provides the researcher with knowledge about the causes” (Qawlik, 2016). Both quantitative and qualitative research is needed. I would compare it to looking at two sides of a coin; both sides give a different picture of the coin, but you need both sides to make up the coin. Quantitative research gives the statistics, the numbers, and says is something is correct or not. Qualitative research gives the full picture of why something is correct or is incorrect, and gives more meaning to the numbers quantitative research provides. This is called a mixed research method (Qawlik, 2016). 

In my two sources, Cherry is using mainly qualitative methods, and Qawlik seems to be using mixed.