I have been processing information from TQR 2013 for the past couple of days as well as thinking about how some of what I learned applies to my research interests. As a student of health behavior, I am often concerned with finding ways to persuade people to change behaviors - either to add health promoting behaviors or to reduce or eliminate behaviors that are believed to be negative. (What is the opposite of health promoting - health demoting??) When examining these issues, it seems to me to be very important to understand not only the value people place on certain behaviors, but how they perceive themselves with respect to those behaviors. Physical activity, my particular interest, has been the subject of many attempts to quantify subjective concepts - such as 'moderate,' 'vigorous,' various levels of 'perceived effort,' etc. Heart rate, the one physiological response that many people can regularly monitor (things like lactate threshold require specialized equipment and testing) is still fairly 'subjective' in the sense that it can be impacted by fatigue, numbers tend to trend downward as fitness increase, the relationship with age is not linear, etc. Because I am not a physiologist, I am interested in even 'fuzzier' results like 'enjoyment,' 'fun,' 'alertness,' 'good mood,' 'feeling energetic,' etc. Adherence or habitual engagement in physical activity (I tend to really dislike the word 'exercise') can be assessed by the numbers, but even counting number or amount of times does not tell me the intensity at which someone worked, or how they felt about it. These questions, as well as the others suggested above (matters related to value and perception) all lend themselves very well to qualitative approach, yet it seems that there is more emphasis based on quantitative methods, even when the 'fuzzier' concepts have to be forced into numerical scales.
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AuthorI am Sheryl L. Chatfield, Ph.D, C.T.R.S. I am a member of the faculty in the College of Public Health at Kent State University. I also Co-coordinate the Graduate Certificate in Qualitative Research and I am a member of the Design Innovation Team at Kent State. Archives
February 2024
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