Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research - Reflection

This week we read two different research papers, one paper that is using qualitative methods and one that is using the case study research method. The paper I read about qualitative methods thought me that it is very hard to get perfect results on your research, because when you test/investigate different things people will always react/behave differently, because we are all unique. This is something that is very hard to work around so to speak, and it is good to have it in mind when using a qualitative method. The other paper using case study research actually gave me a better picture of what a case study is. It was a typical example, in my paper they sent out a survey to students at a university (limits the area) and they did research in different social media websites such as Twitter. During this weeks seminar (the last one) we talked about the case study papers we had read, and looked at the description the groups before us had written on KTH social. We all thought it was well written and we agreed to everything it said. It was a great description on what a case study is. This course have been interesting to follow, and I believe I have a broader perspective about different methods now, and it will be fun to see how I use this new knowledge in the future. 

Theme 6: Qualitative and case study research

Journal: Computers in Human Behavior. Impact factor: 2.067. Paper: Searching the Web for conflicting topics: Page and user factorsLadislao Salmeróna, Yvonne Kammerer b, Pilar García-Carriónc. (2013)

Which qualitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

The paper is a study about how people use search engines and the results they get from it. Even though it could be irrelevant to the topic at hand people read the first “hits” they get, and if it’s a conflicting topic it could be wise to look further than just these top results. They did a qualitative study where they made 67 students with an average of 10 years computer-experience (and internet usage of 7 years) bookmark two pages that best could give someone that didn’t know how to reduce greenhouse gas emission this information. When they bookmarked the pages they asked the students if they had considered the following three criteria: (1) the link position in the list, (2) whether the page provided topically relevant information, and (3) whether the page provided trustworthy information.

What did you learn about qualitative methods from reading the paper?I’m gona start with the quote I used during theme 4: “Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior.” The benefits is that you get the: “why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often used than large samples.” And in the paper they wanted to explore why and how we use a search engine and the top “hits” we get. What I learned from this paper is that you always have to consider the variation of many things, not just computer-experience. People have knowledge since before about a subject, if they are interested, if they believe the information that is given, and the list goes on, because everyone is different, in many ways. Many ways. 

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the qualitative method or methods have been improved?They actually mention this themself, the limitations of their study and what should be considerd for future research: “Finally, it should be acknowledged that the present study comes with certain limitations, which must be considered when interpreting the results. First, in the bookmarking task we explicitly instructed participants to select the two pages that best covered the topic and to indicate whether or not they had considered a given set of criteria for their bookmarking. These self-reports might be prone to social desirability biases, and so might differ from their normal bookmarking and evaluation behavior (cf. Flanagin & Metzger, 2007). Second, for the sake of experimental control, we introduced some constraints in our study. That is, the participants conducted their Web search in a laboratory setting for a single predefined search topic with a finite set of only 10 Web pages. Moreover, the setting did not allow the participants to enter their own search terms in the search engine. Therefore, further research is required to extend the findings of the present study to other search topics and to more natural search situations. Finally, the present study did not examine what the participants had learned from their Web search, or to which information and sources they would refer when writing an essay about the searched topic. This should be addressed in future studies”



Briefly explain to a first year university student what a case study is.

A case study is a way of using a single or several examples of “real-life” phenomena, events or persons to analyze and consequently derive conclusions. Methodologies used in case study research usually include combinations of qualitative and/or quantitative methods as well as empirical and theoretical studies. It can involve different cases and multiple levels of analysis.

Use the "Process of Building Theory from Case Study Research" (Eisenhardt, summarized in Table 1) to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of your selected paper.

I choose the paper: The tweets that killed a university: A case study investigating the use of traditional and social media in the closure of a state university. Nicholas J. Kelling, Angela S. Kelling, John F. Lennon. (2013).  And they investigated how various forms of media were used during this event, foremost twitter. A campus wide survey was combined with social and online media monitoring to assess the topics, authors, and methods used during prominent discussions during and preceding the closure of the University of South Florida Polytechnic (USFP).So, in the article “Building Theories from Case Study Research” Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). we are given a table that we should use to analyze a case study research, so lets do that. The step “Getting started” and the activity “definition of research question” is something they did in my paper and it’s quite clear what they are looking for. The second step “Selecting cases” and the activity “specified population” is something they in the paper also make use of, they have a specified group of people namely students at the USFP. The step “Crafting instruments and protocols” have the activity “multiple data collection methods” and in my paper they did this as well, they sent out a survey (which itself is not so good at getting more information that you might have needed, so I would say that that was a weakness for this paper. But nonetheless they used this quantitative method) and they collected data from different media sources.

Theme 5: Design research - Reflection

So this week we had two lectures today wednesday, one before lunch and one after, and I couldn't attend the first one which was unfortunate because that was Ylvas lecture which we all had prepared a question for, and I wanted to hear the answer to mine. Anyways, I attended the second one which was held by Heibo and it was basically about problems, the definition and solving them, ideas and the technology that lies behind all this. It was interesting but somewhat hard to follow the train of thought sometimes during the lecture.
The texts we read before these two lectures was interesting but not that "giving". I don't really think I learned anything special, except that design research is good to use in certain cases. Maybe it's because I missed the lecture (had a seminar in another course) about this, if I would have been able to attend this blogpost might have been more reflective on what I learnt.
The next week has no course-crash (kurskrock, hehe) so I will be able to attend both on monday and wednesday so stay tuned for a hopefully better reflection next week.

Theme 5: Design research

Fernaeus, Y. & Jacobsson, M. (2009). Comics, Robots, Fashion and Programming: outlining the concept of actDresses. In Proceedings of the 3rd International Conference on Tangible and Embedded Interaction. New York: ACM. 

Personalizing things that you own is very common. For example almost everybody with a MacBook has their favorite case to carry this in. Every smartphone user has their own background picture that makes the phone theirs. You can put patches on your backpack to make it your own, if you like manga you will put manga characters on it. 
In the paper they talk about something called "actDresses" and this is just that: a way to make something (technological) more personalized. They put a collar and a blanket on a pet robot-dinosaur and it also responds to this, and it makes it more "dog" like. They put patches of comics on a vacuum-cleaner to make it more personalized. This way of doing a study, that they test how it looks and feels for you, they create the scenario, I think is great to evaluate the responses in this case. I think that it was interesting and the topic was fun to read about.

Question: Design research is not something you read about everyday. When especially is this useful and/or should be done?



Réhman, S., Sun, J., Liu, L., & Li, H. (2008). Turn Your Mobile Into the Ball: Rendering Live Football Game Using Vibration. IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, 10(6), 1022-1033.

How can media technologies be evaluated?
When I read the course "evaluation methods" we wanted to test how fast people types SMS on diffrent kind of mobiles. Mobiles with touchscreens, a physical keyboard and old phones using T-9. We did this buy using user testing and also asking questions like how much they use SMS in their everyday life. This is one way of evaluate media technologies, and I believe user testing is the most comon and effective on, because most of media technologies are something people will use and we need to test how it works, how people use it and why they would use it and in what way. The method used during the user test will of course variate depending on what kind of media technologies we are talking about.

What role will prototypes play in research?
Well prototypes has and always will be a great way of testing your product, so they will continue to be used. This is because the prototype is made in the early stages of the project and this will give you a great understanding, even tough it is just a prototype and will not of course be as great as the finalized one, of what needs to be done, or if it is a failure right there and then.

3. Why could it be necessary to develop a proof of concept prototype?
I figure that this depends of what kind of prototype we are talking about. If it's something high-tech and you don't know if the technologies will work/have to prove that it works, or if it's something that you think people will use = buy, but you don't know for sure, then a proof that the market want's this would be a good idea. So depending on what perspective we look at this can differ want kind of proof of concept prototype needs to be made.

Theme 4: Quantitative research - Reflection

The seminar/lecture we had today (wednesday 4/12) was really inspiring and well planed and executed. I thought we as a group of 5 really got down to the benefits and weaknesses of using both quantitative and qualitative methods. I liked the setup that the lecture had and I hope for more of this in the future. 

In the seminar/lecture we often got into discussions with the other groups when we presented our ideas, and this for me was very fulfilling and I thought that this was a good way to see how we as students think and feel about these different kind of methods.
Before all this we all had read yet another paper and got instructions to determine the benefits and limitations of using quantitative methods, so when we got to talking about qualitative methods in the group it felt like we didn't know that much about it. We all had read about it and know what it is, but since we read a paper and got a more deeper understanding on qualitative methods we had better arguments there. This being said, I now believe I know more about qualitative methods than before the seminar/lecture, and perhaps this was the point all along, or according to the course plan I should say.

There are always different methods of collecting data, and which kind is the best is of course depending on what you are looking into and/or the situation (and even more complex questions than that). If I today would start a research project I believe I would know what is the best method to use, and how to use it, and this is something very useful in the future I think. So I would say that this week has been the most interesting and educational week for me so far. Let's see how the next themes will turn up to be.

Theme 4: Quantitative research

The paper I read and the journal it belongs to:

• Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (1.778)
• Peers, Predators, and Porn: Predicting Parental Underestimation of Children's Risky Online Experiences. Sahara Byrne, Sherri Jean Katz, Theodore Lee, Daniel Linz, Mary McIlrath. Article first published online: 10 OCT 2013. DOI: 10.1111/jcc4.12040

Which quantitative method or methods are used in the paper? Which are the benefits and limitations of using these methods?

First of, the definition quantitative method can be described as: “Quantitative methods emphasise on objective measurements and numerical analysis of data collected through polls, questionnaires or surveys. Quantitative research focuses on gathering numerical data and generalizing it across groups of people”. (Babbie, Earl R. 2010). In this paper, they did a survey, online, using email as a confirmation tool if the parents and child would participate in the online survey. They got answers from 454 matched parent and child pairs. I think that this is not a very high amount of participants, but nonetheless according to the definition this is a quantitative method. The benefits with this method is that you get much data that can be analyzed and generalized or even see a pattern that could be useful for getting people aware and maybe have to change their behaviour, in this paper the example is that some parents might think about changing their parenting-style. The limitations with quantitative method is the opposite, you get a bunch of data to analyze but maybe this isn’t the way to go to completely understand why or how to change a behavior. All you have is numbers, statistics, to look at. You have to be more “hands on” so to speak to get a better understanding of behaviour-styles, were the qualitative method comes in.

What did you learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper?

Well as I mentioned they used the online survey for gathering information and statistics, something very common these days. I didn't really learn about quantitative methods from reading the paper, more from googling it and reading about the method itself and it’s definition.

Which are the main methodological problems of the study? How could the use of the quantitative method or methods have been improved?

First of, methodological problems can be explained as: “Methodology means logic of methods including the rationale for the adoption of a particular method over the other(s), the appropriateness of a method in a research etc. Methodological issues are therefore issues/problems/questions that are consequences (related to) of the dimensions specified in the first statement. They involve concerns such as reliability, validity and dependability of data, results, conclusions and generalisations in a research enterprise. For example, if the result of a quantitative research is doubtful, the issue might be in the methods adopted in collecting the data, or those of analysing the same data”.  And in the paper they have their own “Limitations” part where they write: “...while we asked participants to report falsities, we are subject to the same risks as many other large sample surveys, such as social desirability and response sets. Second, we make no confident claim about causality due to the correlational design of this study. Third, while parent–child paired samples have many strengths, the exact question wording is slightly different for an adult versus child sample and may lead to variations in reporting. Finally, while we were able to explain a percent of variance that closely resembles many social scientific inquiries employing this type of design, we clearly have more work to do before we determine the majority of factors involved.”  The biggest problem here I believe is the social desirability, because we are talking about being cyberbullied, porn and internet usage.

Fondell, E and colleagues (2010). Physical activity, stress, and self-reported upper respiratory tract infection. Med Sci Sports Exerc, 43(2), 272-279.

That exercise, moderate to high, keeps us more healthy in general is something I think everyone knows, so it’s not that surprising that people with a total amount of physical activity - moderate to high, had a lower risk of URTI. Also that stress (mostly men they found) might be more beneficial from exercise. This is also not surprising to me. The thing I found interesting, and this is not positive, is that people seek primary care for a regular cold, I.E. they go to “vårdcentralen” or a hospital I figure. Why is that? That’s a question I would like an answer to.

Which are the benefits and limitations of using qualitative/quantitative methods?

What is qualitative methods? Well: “Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior.” The benefits is that you get the: “why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but focused samples are more often used than large samples.”

So you must always think about what the report is about, or if you are going to do a study/research yourself, what kind of method, qualitative or quantitative, that best suits your needs.

Qualitative is obviously beneficial when it comes to finding behaviour-styles and you want to know the why and how, and it can therefore answer a more complex question; just like human behaviour is. Qualitative methods are used in smaller groups/numbers.

Quantitative is better when trying to get a more generalised picture of something, therefore the bigger number of people asked using for example a survey. Often of what, where and when for something. For example when people do something; like being online and cyberbullying. Or if you buy regular vs eko-milk. To find statistics/large numbers to analyze I would say.

Theme 3: Research and theory - Reflection

This week we had two seminars, instead of one lecture and one seminar. In the first seminar we discussed the journal (very briefly) and then with focus on the paper we read. We did this in small groups of 3-4 people. We then chose a paper, mine, and discussed this and later on presented it to the rest of the class. Apparently the paper I read another group also found the most interesting, so this was very interesting to see how they looked at the paper and I found the class discussion to be very meaningful.

The other seminar we looked at theory and what it is/means, with first the focus on what our papers we read had for a theory, and then we chose one to look more into and write about on the KTH social webpage. We chose a girl in my groups paper which was very interesting. It was about what signals webshops can send customers, such as a nice and fancy website can send out the signal that they sell fancy stuff for a high price - but it’s worth it, but infact it might not be at all, it’s all about the signals that we interupt that visits the webshop. The theory for this paper we in the group thought used Explanation and Prediction. Prediction because of if something , x, leads to something else, y, this is a prediction. Which was true with the webshops, if it was a nice site with proper information about the goods being sold, you wanted to buy it vs a ugly site with little information, you did not want to buy what was being selt. The Explanation theory, that according to Gregor (2006) says; “says what is, how, why, when, and where”, I thought also was a match for this paper. The combination Explanation and Prediction is defined in Gregor (2006) as: “Says what is, how, why, when, where, and what will be.Provides predictions and has both testable propositions and causal explanations.”

We then talked about theory in general, and what we thought theory is and means. We talked about what we wrote according to the question “describe theory for a first year student.” And most of us felt that theory can’t easily be explained, and that it can mean or point to very different things. The example life-theories came up, that we believe in the theories made by men thousands of years ago.

All in all, theory is a very big topic/subject and it will be interesting to see what happens next in this course.

Theme 3: Research and theory

I choose the article “Computers in Human Behavior” (Robert Tennyson, 2012) Impact factor: 2.067 (2012) 
And the aim in the article is to examen the use of computers from a psychological point of view. Both by individuals, groups and the rest of society. The primary message in the journal is information about human behavior. Topics that are common in the article are:  Professional practice, training, research and theory development, human development, learning, cognition, personality, and social interactions.

I choose the paper: "Social Netwokring Sites: Their Users and Social Implications - A Longitudinal Study (Petter, B. Brandtzæg, 2012) JCMC Five Year Impact Factor: 4.748

This paper is about people that uses social networking sites (SNSs) and what this usage can lead to from a social implication point of view. There are four social capital dimensions to look at: face-to-face interactions, number of acquaintances, bridging capital and absence of loneliness. Where the results are that users of SNSs got a higher score on the first three social capital dimensions, whereas non-user got a higher score on the last one. So even though users have a more face-to-face interactions and a larger number of acquaintances they are still more lonely than a non-user of SNSs.
In the conclusion they answer my thoughts about how accurate this paper is with the following comment: “However, the conclusions in the present study should be interpreted with caution; the effect sizes were rather small and it was not possible to inferring causation from a statistical association between SNS-usage and social implications.” It also seems that they use one source much more than others, namly Turkle (2011), and you should always broad your perspective.

1. Briefly explain to a first year student what theory is, and what theory is not.

In the paper “What Theory is Not” they claim that theory is not the actual data or references, variables, hypotheses or diagrams. But to explain a theory you should look at these different types and use them. So, theory is something you can explain by using the previously mentioned methods. So you have facts and evidence to support your theory.

2. Describe the major theory or theories that are used in your selected paper. Which theory type (see Table 2 in Gregor) can the theory or theories be characterized as?

They have researched and looked mostly at statistics to come to a conclusion. So in my paper the theory type from Table 2 (Gregor, 2006) can be characterized as analysis.

3. Which are the benefits and limitations of using the selected theory or theories?

The benefits with analysis is that it’s not so restricted, we can read from Gregor (2006) that analysis is; “The theory does not extend beyond analysis and description. No causal relationships among phenomena are specified and no predictions are made.” So it’s kind of loose and easy to write a paper/report around. The limitations then however is that you almost never get something concrete.

Theme 2: Critical media studies - Reflections

This week we had our first seminar, and as we were told I read the chapter 4: “The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception” written by Adorno och Horkheimer. Or I had read it before this, I read it earlier for the Friday deadline. For that deadline I also read the other chapters we were told to read, but some of it I speed-read, because I prepared with reading and remembering the questions, so I was looking for the answers at most parts. Anyway in the seminar we first talked two-two about what we thought about this chapter. Me and the other person wanted to point out that the authors were very single-sided and that they talked much about escaping reality, and that this instead leeds onto more fascination rather than actually fleeing the reality, your reality. In the seminar I did my part I think, I could have contributed a bit more, so I will think about that for the next time. What I will take with me this week is that you should always be questioning where information comes from and analyze why the author might be thinking/feeling the way he or she does. For example during the seminar we talked about that the authors felt angry, and this is understandable because of the war. So that’s an interesting point of view to think about in the future, try and locate why the author is feeling the way he/she does. Furthermore I always learn when discussing philosophical questions, because it’s a subject I never read anything about before, and this is more learning about humans and a way to look at things, it’s hard to describe exactly what in text. One thing we talked about that was interesting is the following quote from the author's: “mass media is reality”. And this is in a way still true today. I think we are better at being critical but since we often, almost always I would say, are critical about the news itself that are being sent, and not what is NOT being sent. And this is the point, we don’t know what mass media doesn't tell us. This is one of the worlds biggest conspiracy arguments of course, but I think there’s some truth in it, even though we as human beings always want the truth and are curious and can go very far to reach the answers we seek, so the truth is probably always revealed. I say probably because I’m not 100% sure about that. And by truth I mean that mass media tells us everything and don’t hide anything, I.E. hiding is lying.

Theme 2: Critical media studies

1.
Enlightenment can somewhat be translated to education. What we know makes us more aware. And awareness is something we humans really pursuit. If we can’t understand it we fear it, hence that we want to be aware of what is happening around us, around the world, so we don’t fear it. And science has made us more aware, more educated, and we can overcome our fear and continue to both understand and dominate the world.

2.

Myths are a way to explain the unknown. If you don’t know why the lightning strikes, why not make something up to make people believe this is true? It’s a way to make people think they have knowledge (even scientific if you can go to that extent) and therefore a way to avoid fear. We as a people always want to avoid fear. This can, of course, be something that people actually believed in and not seemed made up at the time.

3.

They never mention anything in particular that is new or old media, but as I see it’s media that can reach a big crowd, like television or a radio program, is the new kind of media. A method to reach out to more people than ever before. Quantity before quality as we say in Swedish, and the message being sent (metaphorically speaking) is not that good but it gets out to a lot of people. And the old media reached out is the opposite.

4 and 5.

This is an interesting topic, and how Adorno and Horkheimer look at it. What they are claiming is that we are like animals; we want to fit in and be as the rest of the pack so to speak. And this is being “controlled” by mass media, how we see things, the market and selling things that everyone “should have”. This leads too much of the same things being produced and our imagination is robed from us. We as consumers don’t have anything to say at all, the market is just regulated so we think we are in control. And this can be applied to the culture perspective as well; it’s a means to control us. Hence the notion on “mass deception”, we think we get want we want but actually we are being manipulated.

6.

I found it very interesting to read about films and radio today. How they are made in a certain way so that we think we use are imagination although we are not since the film is so narrow and leads us onto these thoughts. That media like films and radio have been made this way for decades and we have learned and been adapted to it, and now we automatically can interpret the information even though we are distracted, and this actually makes our imagination smaller and smaller. This media has made us think we are using our imagination but we really are not: we imagine what they want us to imagine.

Theme 1: Theory of science - Reflection

This is the first reflection in the course and due to Leif being on sick leave we didn’t have any lectures or seminaries where we could have been able to discuss our thoughts and this week’s assignment. Instead we were told to read other students blog posts and reflect what we learned from this. 

Seeing as this week’s assignment we were to answer questions from the book “The Problems of Philosophy” many answers are quite the same, but of course not all of them. Philosophy is an abstract subject at which you can look at from many different points of view. Although the answers to the questions are not a question of philosophy it’s more about how you interpret Russell’s explanations and thoughts. It’s your view on Russell’s words. And this leads to different kinds of answers, different point of views, but all in all the same conclusion I would say. This is not weird or strange at all, we are all students at a technological university and we all look for a reasonable and understandable answer, something that is not to abstract and something that you can relate to and grasp. Although many of us find it exactly that; it was hard to grasp some of Russell’s thoughts and explanations. We have to take in to account that the book was written in 1912 and the world looked very different back then, but it’s also noteworthy to mention that philosophy goes way, way back. Nevertheless, my point is that we as students in this course don’t look at the world the same way as Russell probably did, or Socrates for that matter. That being said, I found many answers differentiated from my own, and it got me thinking if I had misunderstood the book. But I as mentioned, it’s not just about understanding it’s about my point of view, how I look at things, how I see the world. This is one of the things I will be bringing with me after this week, when we look at philosophy we must also look at the specific person saying these things. I don’t know Russell, I don’t know all the students in this class, and their point of view on the world is unknown to me. Now you may be thinking I’m contradicting myself since I first said that we are all the same: technology students, and now I’m saying we are all different. To be perfectly clear, what I mean is that we all look for the same kind of answer, but since we look at the world with different eyes because we all have different backgrounds, the answer will differentiate.  

When I started this reflection I didn’t really mean to reflect on why or how our answers differentiate, but now I’m quite fascinated by it and my reflection probably differentiate from the others which might have been a nice twist to it. And seeing as this assignment got altered when Leif went on sick leave, and we instead on reflect on what we learned during the lectures and seminaries, were to reflect upon what we learned from reading other blog posts, this will be just that.

Theme 1: Theory of science

1. What does Russell mean by "sense data" and why does he introduce this notion?

Russell means that this is our own way to register material things, “matter”. Russell says that it is senses, and as the word means it is exactly that: smell, touch, hearing, sight and taste. In the beginning of the book Russell makes the example of how we see a table, by the way it looks in shape (sight) and that it’s smooth (feel). This is sense-data, all the things we experience from our senses. I believe this can vary from person to person. What I think is smooth, what I think lavender smells like. It should be mentioned that this can differ, but I guess that’s not so important because most examples is based on the sense sight, and we see things the same (“matter”-things at least.)

Russell introduces this notion so that we are clear on that this is something real, our senses are real, but if the table really exists, matter wise, is a different story. So this term is introduced so that we get the picture and understands Russell’s following examples.

2.  What is the meaning of the terms "proposition" and "statement of fact"? How does propositions and statement of facts differ from other kinds of verbal expressions?

From what I can grasp it seems to mean that a “proposition” is like a suggestion you could say. If I would talk about say Henry Ford, I would make a proposition on the basis that I’m only acquainted by history, and then make a suggestion on who he was. That’s how I would translate it anyway, but it’s more complicated than that tough. Statement of fact is somewhat similar, I make a statement about Henry Ford based on the history I know of him, and then this is just fact, but this in turn can also generate my proposition of him. So in my book these things are connected, and have a deeper meaning, and thus differ from other kinds of verbal expressions.

3.  In chapter 5 ("Knowledge by Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description") Russell introduces the notion "definite description". What does this notion mean?

First of we look at the notion “ambiguous description” to understand what a definite description is. An ambiguous description is a simple description, like “a car”, this can be any car, somewhere in the world, belonging to anyone, whereas a definite description is, chokingly, a more concrete description. For example: “the car with three wheels” is a more concrete description. This is not an absolute description of course, but this narrows it down much more, and also points to just the one car, thus “the car” instead of “a car”.

4.  In chapter 13 ("Knowledge, Error and Probable Opinion") and in chapter 14 ("The Limits of Philosophical Knowledge") Russell attacks traditional problems in theory of knowledge (epistemology). What are the main points in Russell's presentation?

In chapter 13 Russell explains that we have 3 different ways to accept, or look at, knowledge.
Russell means that if we believe something to be the way it is, and this is also how it actually is, you are right; this is called knowledge. And the opposite of this, if you believe something that is NOT the way it actually is, you are wrong; this is called error. And the third one is somewhat in the middle of these to. Something that we believe in but it is not knowledge or error (and Russell’s talks about self-evidence: how you judge your own sense-data, and this can of course have different degrees where a high degree is more to be trusted) and in this third way the degree of self-evidence is not the highest, this can be called; probable opinion. And this takes us to Russell’s statement and attack: “Thus the greater part of what would commonly pass as knowledge is more or less probable opinion.”

In chapter 14 Russell points of two things: (1) acquaintance with a thing does not logically involve a knowledge of its relations, and (2) a knowledge of some of its relations does not involve a knowledge of all of its relations nor a knowledge of its 'nature' in the above sense. Where the conclusion Russell makes is the point; in his example a tooth ache. I would know I have it because it hurts and my acquaintance with pain and my teeth are obvious. The relations however, why it hurts and what caused this pain is unclear to me, but not to the dentist, however the dentist can’t feel MY pain and therefore can never be acquainted with any of its patients tooth aches. The point is that both the dentist and the patient only seems to have knowledge of it, the dentist can never really be acquainted to the paints ache and the patient can never really know the relations of the ache, only seem to know them.