Qualitative vs Quantitative

So blogs..we meet again.

I’ll admit. I was one of those people who thought ‘no statistics? no problemo’. Surely research involving next to no figures would be far more simple and..dare I say it..well just a little bit of common sense..but Dr Tracey Lloyd has succeeded in convincing me otherwise.

On the face of it Quantitative data would seem like the more scientific approach to analysing data. Quantitative research is the method which involves the analysis of numerical data in order to measure our experiment. The purpose of Quantitative data would be to quantify data and generalise the results from the sample in question to the population of interest. It is also used in order to measure the frequency of various views and opinions in a chosen sample.

When we are conducting an experiment with the use of quantitative research we would usually opt to using large number of cases representing the population of interest and participants are selected at random.

Qualitative research produces rich data, and provides us with a deep understanding of the participant and what they have said. In other words qualitative research helps us to gain an understanding of the underlying reasons and motivations and to provide insights into their world, which is pretty interesting. Qualitative method can be used by the use of questionnaires, focus groups, observations and the like. This means that we are also able to access a contextual understanding. By the means of transcription we are able to analyse each line of what was said during the study.

An important difference between these two types of research is the underlying assumptions about the role of the researcher. In quantitative research, the researcher is ideally an objective observer that neither participates in nor influences what is being studied. In qualitative research, however, it is thought that the researcher can learn the most about a situation by participating and/or being immersed in it. These basic underlying assumptions of both methodologies guide and sequence the types of data collection methods employed.

If I were to sit here arguing which I deemed more scientific, I think I would find myself going around in circles. On one hand there’s the concept that “There’s no such thing as qualitative data. Everything is either 1 or 0” as said by the researcher Fred Kerlinger. On the other hand one could argue that “all research ultimately has a qualitative grounding” D. T. Campbell.  Although the quantitative approach is the more traditional approach I believe that qualitative methods have an equal importance in it’s role played in research.