University students’ understanding of the concepts empirical, theoretical, qualitative and quantitative research

Abstract

University research education in many disciplines is frequently confronted by problems with students’ weak level of understanding of research concepts. A mind map technique was used to investigate how students understand central methodological concepts of empirical, theoretical, qualitative and quantitative. The main hypothesis was that some students have a confused conception of empirical. The mind maps revealed that in the beginning of the course, 75% of the students hold a problematic conception of research, and after the half year course, still half of the participated students had problems with expressing a scientifically sound conception of research. In addition to general undevelopedness of the maps, a severe confused conception of drawing a link from empirical to qualitative or quantitative, but not to both, was found. This finding indicates that some students have problems with understanding the very basic and central concept of empirical.

Keywords:

• conceptions of research
• research learning
• conceptual understanding
• university students
• mind map

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.