Qualitative Research

Following up on our Quantitative research we were asked in our groups to gather some Qualitative data using the Questionnaires we had handed out. I was looking forward to this as our group had already noticed something different in the way people filled in our questionnaires. So we looked into the 2 questions that had baffled us a little bit;
Is it important to stay close to home whilst attending university?
Does it have any effect on your decision to choose a university if the city has a lot more to offer than others?

So we created a ladder of choices in which we offered a lot of big named universities, in order to see what city, people who filled our questionnaire in wanted to attend the university of. We gather information from somebody who had left home to come to Liverpool to study and somebody who already lived in Liverpool who chose to attend the local university.

 

 

The participant simply had to place the university they would most want to attend with their favourite being on top of the ladder and their least favourite being at the foot of the ladder. The choices we gave the participants was; Liverpool Universities, Dublin Universities, Sheffield Universities, Newcastle Universities, Glasgow Universities, Manchester Universities, Birmingham Universities and London Universities.

 

We weren't very surprised in the results we received when our participant who had moved to Liverpool's top choice was Liverpool, however when we asked Rebecca (Our student from Liverpool) she had some surprising results:

 

Our results shown that Liverpool was actually her 3rd choice of university, so when we asked Rebecca why she eventually chose not to study in Newcastle or Dublin, she said it would be too big of a move to leave home, and when asked why the cities were in this specific order, both participants answers were similar, they weren't too bothered by living costs or distance from the university, their decisions were purely based on the reputation of the city and the cities nightlife, which also showed i can no longer defend fellow students about their reputation! They are only interested in alcohol!

 

But I did learn a lot about the power of Qualitative research and how important it can be to people using it, like if a university were to take note of my studies, they could advertise a night out for freshers when holding an open day? I don't know its interesting to look at and think just how you could use this type of research to gather information.