Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

This week I've been focusing about the media technology that regards cameras and the science of health. I've chosen an article that's called Low-cost compact cameras: a medical application in CMT disease monitoring by Albert K Chong and it has an impact factor of 1.44. In this research-paper Chong is making a qualitative research about a disease which is called Charcot–Marie–Tooth disease (CMT) that is a “genetically and clinically heterogeneous group of inherited disorders of the peripheral nervous system characterised by progressive loss of muscle tissue and touch sensation across various parts of the body” (Wikipedia). This disease often starts in a persons foot. What basically happens is that the muscle starts to shrink (and thereby the foot) and it could spread to the rest of the body. What Chong is trying to investigate is that if low-cost compact cameras could help to predict if a person has the CMT disease. The measurements needs to be very precise in order to determine if the person in question has the CMT disease. This makes this a qualitative research and that's why i chose it.

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?
The methods that are used in this paper is a mechanical technique. By this I mean gathering a lot of very precise data, and then make a conclusion based on mathematical statistics. The benefits using this method is that you get a very accurate data, and in terms of a medical condition, getting accurate data is crucial in order to determine a disease. The only limitation with this method that I can come up with is that it is a very time-consuming way of a very accurate measure. This is just i hypophysis, but if there is a disease out there that could be detected the same way as above (by making some measurements of the body), and time is a very important key, this could pose a problem for the patient.

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

This paper has described how measurements were made in this experiment. I can not say that I am sure that this is the same for all qualitative methods there is. What I can say though is what i’ve learned that in order to make this qualitative measure you need to be very precise making these measurements in order to make a realistic conclusion..

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

There aren't actually many methodological problems in this paper I think. There are good ways of how the measurements are being made, and the author makes it very clear that in this experiment, the test results need to be at a very precise level because of the human health that is involved. One thing that I can point out, as I said above is that this technique is a bit to time-consuming to make this, so far an appropriate choice in modern hospital.   

Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case Study is a research method that aims to provide in-depth knowledge of the investigating. The characteristics of the case study is that it focuses on a phenomenon that is often difficult to distinguish from the phenomenon's context. Often the focus is on a single (or few) cases, which it then examines the "deep" to get more detailed knowledge than what you can get at such a survey study. The case study method can be used both in the social sciences and the natural sciences, the main difference between them is the way to measure various parameters and variables. The case study occurs mostly within the social sciences.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

        

The paper that I’ve chosen is called ‘’Expert Search for Radio and Television: a Case Study

amongst Dutch Broadcast Professionals’’ by Wietske van den Heuvel and this paper reports the results of a qualitative case study amongst eight Dutch broadcast professionals who frequently use the online search system of The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision. The study is also based on the assumption that the task affects the search strategy. Different test subjects are observed and interviewed while following a scenario with tasks designed around different factors.

The result of this paper shows that the task does not affect the search strategies of the test persons and that the search strategies differs between test persons, not between tasks.

After reading the text Building Theories from Case Study Research by Eisenhardt, K. M. I. realized that it isn't an easy task to take a case study and then try to make a good theory or conclusion.  Eisenhardt, K. M. writes:

“the intensive use of empirical evidence can yield theory which is overly complex” and in the case above with Heuvel W. V. D. this is the complete opposite according to me. The case study that is being done consist of only eight different broadcast professions. By combining this sentence and the conclusion i would say could be mixed into the phrase: “the unintensive use of empirical evidence can yield theory which is underlie complex”, so in this case the Selecting cases is according to me the “Selecting Cases” and “Analyzing Data” has the most weakness in this paper.

One part that I felt was better than I suspected, was that the author used a lot of different categories of people, and by different categories I mean different work duties, people with different education, ages experiences etcetera(chapter 4.2). I didn't actually found anything in the text by Eisenhardt, K. M. I. that had this example as a strength, but the closest I believe that it would relate to is “Crafting Instruments and Protocols” and “Entering the Field”.