Universität zu Köln

Dr. Vanessa Torres van Grinsven studied Philosophy and Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Universitat de Barcelona. With this background, she later specialised in research methodology. Her dissertation was on a methodological subject, namely motivation of respondents in business and organisational surveys and this research was carried out in a combined joint programme with Utrecht University and Statistics Netherlands (CBS). Business and organisational surveys are a broad field that include, for example, surveys done at schools and other professional organisations. Part of her PhD research was carried out within the European project Blue-Ets.

After, she worked as a lecturer research methodology at Wageningen University where she further developed her skills and knowledge about research methodology and teaching research methodology; and later as an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Education of the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences at Maastricht University. In this latter position her main task was the evaluation of the educational programme of the Medical education by means of online satisfaction surveys. 

Her approach is characterized by paradigmatic flexibility and tolerance. This supports the use of a mix of different research methods as well as modes of analysis while being guided primarily by the researcher's desire to produce valid and socially useful knowledge. The important questions are whether the research has achieved the research goals and whether the gained knowledge is valid. Practically, this standpoint thrives well with the process approach (Kumar 1999 ), because in this process approach, the research  question or hypothesis is leading for all decisions in the various stages of research.

  

Current research interests:

• Mixed Methods
• Using insights and procedures from qualitative research to improve the operationalisation of constructs in quantitative research and quantitative measurement instruments
• The response process in psychometric tests and measurement error
• Meta-research

Teaching:

Module Research Methods (Modul Forschungsmethoden) consisting of two Seminars:
Untersuchungsdesigns und qualitative und quantitative Erhebungs- und Auswertungsmethoden und Interventionsforschung
Methoden der deskriptiven und schließenden Statistik in der Evaluations- und Interventionsforschung

In charge of the Consultancy Centre for Empirical Research

  

Selected publications

Torres van Grinsven, V. (2014), A Pragmatic Mixed-Methods Analysis: Identifying Perspectives and Sentiments with Social Media Data, In SAGE Research Methods Cases. London, United Kingdom: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Torres van Grinsven, V., Bolko, I., & Bavdaž, M.(2014), In Search of Motivation for the Business Survey Response Task, Journal of Official Statistics, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 579–606

Torres van Grinsven, V., & Snijkers, G. (2015), Sentiments and Perceptions of Business Respondents on Social Media: an Exploratory Analysis, Journal of Official Statistics, Vol. 31, No. 2, pp.1–24

Torres van Grinsven, V. (2015), Utrecht University Repository (Dissertation), Motivation in Business Survey Response Behavior : Influencing motivation to improve Survey outcome

Torres van Grinsven, V. (2017), Carrying out a meta-analysis of experimental design research, In SAGE Research Methods Cases. London, United Kingdom: SAGE Publications, Ltd.

Torres van Grinsven, V. (2022). Sources of measurement error in pediatric intelligence testing. Methodological Innovations, 15(1), 96 - 104. https://doi.org/10.1177/20597991221077919