Publication details
Mixed Research Design in Cartography: A Combination of Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2014 |
| Type | Article in Periodical |
| Magazine / Source | Kartographische Nachrichten |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Field | Earth magnetism, geography |
| Keywords | evaluation;mixed research design;mutep;eye-tracking;cognitive cartography |
| Description | The contribution deals with methodological issues connected with the evaluation of cartographic materials. A new research design for map evaluation comes from an extensive cooperation between cartographers and psychologists. Contrary to strictly quantitative approaches, we propose a mixed research design, combining the quantitative and qualitative methods, because also the qualitative exploration of the corresponding cognitive strategies is in some cases necessary for an in-depth interpretation of the results. Proposed research design is demonstrated by a sample experiment concerning comparison and evaluation of suitability of two different cartographic approaches to avalanche hazard visualization. The quantitative analysis enables to detect potential differences in the compared visualization methods in the sense of their effectiveness and efficiency, and the qualitative analysis of the eye-movement data might improve our understanding of the ways different cognitive strategies are applied. The experiment was carried on the newly developed interactive assessment tool MUTEP, which substantially increases the reliability of experiments in cognitive cartography. MUTEP enables easy data collection and effective evaluation of the results which could be subsequently analyzed. |
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