This essay will examine the qualitative aspects of a study based on adolescents and “Friends-with-Benefits” relationships and in what regard the findings are useful in both understanding human relationships and the benefits this may have to an individual on both a professional and personal level. The disadvantages of qualitative research and its limitations as documented by the scientific community through a range of papers and studies will also be examined, along with the contributions that qualitative research has offered various fields, particularly psychology. The concept of friends-with-benefits is an interesting topic, because it goes against the status quo of what constitutes the ...view middle of the document...
Although quantitative research is generally seen as more scientific, some argue that qualitative research offers more to science due its specificity with a subject matter (Parker, 2007). The founder of scientific psychology, Willhelm Wundt believed that there was a need for qualitative research in psychology, as quantitative research failed to cover many aspects of human life, such as culture and imagination (Wertz, Charmaz, McMullen, 2011). Quantitative research on the other hand is used to gather empirical evidence to support a theory and aims to apply primarily mathematical models to phenomena. Measurement is fundamental to Quantitative research, and in most cases researchers using this method will ask a very specific question and collect numerical data from their participants to potentially answer the question (Given, 2008) One of the major advantages of Quantitative research is the ability to garner a large amount of information and to be easily able to compile this data to reach a conclusion (Word Press, 2011). The disadvantage of this type of research is that the results do not attribute for a human factor, and as such are not as insightful as what Qualitative research may be. This can lead to the data set being superficial and on occasion ineffective or unusable in a practical sense (Nykiel, 2007).
The FWB study's objective is to understand and describe the experiences of Swedish adolescents in regard to their FWB relationships. The qualitative data gathered from this objective would then be used to form a theory as to why these adolescents seek or find themselves in FWB relationships, and what may cause them to stay or leave these types of relationships. There was also a focus on sexual health, to determine if the adolescents were using or aware of adequate protection from the likes of unwanted pregnancy and STIs, which has strong potential to shed light on sexual health awareness.
The study participants were Swedish adolescents, aged between sixteen and eighteen. This sample group was chosen due to a national Swedish report on sexual behavior among adolescents concluding that there is an increased number of lifetime partners, casual sexual partners and an openness for Friends-with-benefits relationships within Sweden (Forsberg, 2006). The FWB study is an attempt to understand the human factor behind these statistics, and works well along side the study performed by Forsberg, to attempt to elaborate and explain the findings of the Quantitative research study. However, one of the key problems with the study is the sample group. There were eight participants, only two of which were male, and the participants were taken from the same medium-sized city. This means that it's difficult to reach a conclusion with the paper outside of the sample group, as it's not in any way representative of a larger population and also limited in its representation of the male perspective. The Forsberg study however is a supportive basis of...
