Quantitative Methods

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Quantitative Methods
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Quantitative Methods

• Focus on numbers as opposed to text
• Even textual information is converted to numbers
• Purpose
• Describe situations/events/contexts (can be done
  in any study)
• Look for connections/relationships between/among
  variables (should be limited to studies with
  random samples)

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Quantitative Methods

• Options
• Tests
• Surveys Structured/Formal Interviews
• Content Analysis
• Transaction Log Analysis
• Bibliometrics/ Citation Analysis

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Tests

• If they have factual right/wrong answers
• Can be scored objectively
• Can be used to measure knowledge, retention,
  changes in knowledge
• Criticized as being reductive and inauthentic

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Surveys (Remember me?)

• Any information that can be reduced to numbers
  (i.e. any responses that are not free-text/ open
  comment)
• Used to measure satisfaction, service quality,
  awareness, preferences, demographics, use, user
  needs etc.

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Content Analysis

• Studying textual documentation (or images, audio,
  etc.) for patterns and themes through
  counts/frequencies
• Number of times a word appears
• Number of variations of a word
• Frequency of word across documents/ databases,
  etc.

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Quantitative Transaction Log Analysis

• Quantitative study of user behavior as exhibited
  through computer logs
• Domains (.gov, .edu, .com)
• Hits
• Paths followed
• Time spent (searching, viewing, downloading)
• Errors
• Applications used
• Could be applied to circulation, ILL, web pages,
  databases, etc.

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Quantitative Bibliometrics

• Quantitative study of literature
• Patterns of publishing within a field or body of
  literature
• Quantitative study of information associated with
  published works authorship, publishers,
  citations