Qualitative vs Quantitative: Key Differences in Research Types HowStuffWorks

No matter what approach you choose, you should design your research in such a way that it delivers results that are objective, reliable, and valid. You certainly can because these approaches are not mutually exclusive. In other words, using one does not necessarily exclude the other. Moreover, both these approaches are useful for different reasons. Based on this example, you’ve now established that 40% of the population reads fiction. You’ve probably also discovered in what proportion the population consumes other reading materials.

Harness The Power of Web Scraping for Qualitative Data Extraction

This means you could use both approaches in one project to achieve different goals. For example, you could use qualitative to formulate a hypothesis. Once formulated, quantitative research will allow you to confirm the hypothesis. After you identify the themes, connections, and patterns, now you need to assign meaning and importance to the data. For example, if a company need to identify the diversity of its personnel, it would look at qualitative data such as ethnicity and race of its employees.

It is a subjective analysis that is more concerned with non-statistical data that cannot be computed. Quantitative research deals with numbers and statistics, while qualitative research deals with words and meanings. It’s also possible to start with a survey to find out the overall trends, followed by interviews to better understand the reasons behind the trends.

Qualitative Methods

This is simply because it’s not based on numerical values but rather text, images, video, and the like. As such, you won’t be able to use mathematical analysis to analyze and interpret your results. Quantitative data analysis ends with easy to understand and quantifiable results.

Quantitative data refers to numerical information you can measure and count. This approach is particularly valuable for exploring complex and multifaceted issues, providing a deeper understanding of the intricacies involved. It might sound like quantitative and qualitative research do not play well together.

The internet has enabled us to create large volumes of data at a staggering pace. Moreover, the way you analyze it depends on the type of data you are working with. We broadly classify data into two forms — qualitative and quantitative.

1. For most research topics you can choose a qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods approach.
2. Quantitative research is respected as being objective and viable.
3. The goal is to understand the quality and texture of people’s experiences, how they make sense of them, and the implications for their lives.
4. Statistics help us turn quantitative data into useful information to help with decision-making.
5. However, more clarity can be obtained by concurrently using qualitative and quantitative methods.

Qualitative vs Quantitative Data: Definitions, Analysis, Examples

However, most of these methods are static, inflexible (you can’t change a question because a participant doesn’t understand it), and provide a “what” answer rather than a “why” answer. The result is a number that can be used to assess differences between groups. Can also be used to gain a deeper understanding into specific topics. Qualitative research will now enable you to learn the reasons for these reading habits.

Small samples are used in an unstructured approach and they are non-representative of the general population hence the method cannot be used to generalize the entire population. Unlike qualitative research, which focuses on nonnumerical, descriptive data, quantitative research data involves measurements, counts and statistical techniques to draw objective conclusions. Quantitative and qualitative data can be collected using various methods. It is important to use a data collection method that will help answer your research question(s). Common qualitative methods include interviews with open-ended questions, observations described in words, and literature reviews that explore concepts and theories. Common quantitative methods include experiments, observations recorded as numbers, and surveys with closed-ended questions.

There is a wide range of tools, dashboards, and programs that you can use to make the whole data analysis process effective and profitable. This step involves looking for the relative importance of data, identifying relationships between data sets or themes, and trying to find explanations from the available data. As you might guess qualitative data is information that can’t be expressed as a number and can’t be measured.

It is used in many different contexts by academics, governments, businesses, and other organisations. Simple maths or more advanced statistical analysis is used to discover commonalities or patterns in the data. By using both, researchers can gain a fuller, more comprehensive understanding of a phenomenon. Qualitative research does not look into causal relationships between variables, but rather into themes, values, interpretations, and meanings.

Quantitative data is information about quantities, and therefore numbers, and qualitative data is descriptive, and regards phenomenon which can be observed but not measured, such as language. Neither method is more right than the other, but they serve different purposes. Learn more about the key differences between qualitative and quantitative research and how you can use them. Let’s say you want to learn how a group will vote in an election. You face a classic decision of gathering qualitative vs. quantitative data. Data collection is the systematic process by which observations or measurements are gathered in research.

In a quantitative analysis the characteristics of objects are often undisclosed. The typical data analyzed qualitatively include color, gender, nationality, taste, appearance, and many more as long as the data cannot be computed. Qualitative research aims to explore and understand the depth, context and nuances of human experiences, behaviors and phenomena. This what is quantitative and qualitative analysis methodological approach emphasizes gathering rich, nonnumerical information through methods such as interviews, focus groups, observations and content analysis. In mixed methods research, you use both qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis methods to answer your research question. Qualitative and quantitative methods both play an important role in psychology.

Qualitative Research Methods

And if the analytical route doesn’t work, the remainder of the pie can be thrown at politicians who try to enforce maximum bath water temperature standards. On the other side, quantitative research relies heavily on the ability to gather data from a large sample and use it to explain a far larger population (this is called “generalisability”). In our bathwater analysis, we would need data from hundreds of people for us to be able to make a universal statement (i.e. to generalise), and at least a few dozen to be able to identify a potential pattern. In terms of data collection, we’d probably use a more scalable tool such as an online survey to gather comparatively basic data. Qualitative or quantitative data by itself can’t prove or demonstrate anything, but has to be analysed to show its meaning in relation to the research questions.

As a rule, then, qualitative research is not generalizable (cannot be applied to people outside the research participants). We’ve now recapped what qualitative research is and what it’s used for. Let’s now consider some methods to collect data for this type of research. Qualitative data analysis is very important because it allows data sciences and statisticians to form parameters for observing and analyzing larger sets of data. Quantitative data is data that can be expressed as a number or can be quantified.