A Response to Theory in General

In reference to one of my classmates’ questions concerning whether qualitative or quantitative theory is more useful in communications theory and whether each have their own pros and cons:

I think both are equally useful in communications theory, but which one the researcher chooses depends the type of research being conducted.  If the researcher is doing introductory work on a topic, quantitative research is probably better because it gives numerical evidence and is easier to generalize than qualitative research.  However, if someone previously conducted a study on said topic, then the researcher could choose to do a more in-depth study using the qualitative method in order to discover the reasoning behind the statistics and why people feel the way that they do. This study would dive deeper into the topic than a quantitative study.

In reference to another classmates’ question concerning how understanding theories applied to mass audience can help them as a communication professional:

As a communication profession it is important to understand theory because theory is the basis for how the media being created affects people, how changes in the media can change reception and how the media being created can better suit society as a whole.  In essence, theory is research completed on our products, just on a huge scale.  It’s almost like free market research, and we should embrace it.  Theory can aid us in knowing the best ways to create media to suit our audiences’ needs and how slight alterations in our work can change the way our pieces are received.

In reference to another classmate’s question pondering the validity of theory in that at the root of theory assumption prevails.

Social sciences will always be a little bit less valid than studies conducted in chemistry or biology because we can’t put things in a test tube, control the environment and come up with a result that is true all the time.  It is impossible to control the environment in social science because we study what people think and how they react.  However, we can come as close as possible to make very general, possibly true assumptions concerning communication theory. Unlike truly scientific theory, social science theory is always evolving and being tweaked.  Research on a topic is never truly complete, as there are always more things to include in the study, a different demographic to test or a medium to change.

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