Quality and Quantity Work Hand in Hand

Nature journaling can provide another way to gather qualitative data on a field trip. A gale recently made a water quality data collection boat trip impossible for a visiting high school class. By remaining flexible, the education department was able to do a land-based version of the trip. Most of the data is collected using the YSI and other traditional equipment. Students entered the data from five different sites on a table so that they could observe patterns and anomalies. On the other side of the paper, they drew five postcard sketches of each of the same five sites. One question that is raised repeatedly on this trip is – “does the data indicate that the estuary is healthy or not?”  After looking at the numbers, students weren’t sure, but when they looked at their sketches, they could see no obvious pollution, litter, or die-offs. This, in turn, led to a productive discussion of the way qualitative and quantitative data can work together to produce a deeper understanding of a place. Questions inevitably and ideally lead to more questions, so students were also able to see that their percent cloud cover estimations on the data chart might be considered both qualitative and quantitative.