Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research
The main difference between quantitative and qualitative research is obvious from their names. Quantitative research regards numbers and statistical data, while qualitative research is about words, their meanings, and interpretations. Both of them are crucial and widely used in academic writing and different fields of study.
Quantitative research deals with figures and graphs. It is used to test theories, hypotheses, and assumptions. You can operate with the generalized facts on a certain topic obtained with the help of experiments, observations, and answers to close-ended questions in surveys.
Qualitative research focuses on words to understand and interpret experiences, thoughts, and concepts. You can have deeper insights in the topic if their overall ideas are not well-understood. Interviews that use open-ended questions, literature reviews, and extended verbal descriptions of observations are utilized to research theories and concepts.
Main Differences
These are quite different research approaches used to gather and analyze data in many types of academic paper writing.
Quantitative research methods focus on testing hypotheses and theories, while qualitative research deals mostly with exploring the ideas and formulating the hypotheses or theories on their basis.
The data in quantitative research is presented and analyzed in numbers, tables, and graphs. The analysis in qualitative research goes via interpreting, categorizing, and summarizing. Therefore, numbers, graphs, and tables depict quantitative analysis, while words refer to a qualitative one.
Quantitative methods involve a lot of respondents, though, for qualitative analysis, you need just a few. Surveys and interviews are widely used for both quantitative and qualitative analysis. However, the former uses close-ended or multiple-choice questions, while the latter uses open-ended ones.
To sum up, let’s consider keywords for both types. Key terms for quantitative analysis are measurement, testing, replicability, and objectivity. Such keywords as context, subjectivity, understanding, and complexity refer to qualitative analysis.
Methods of Data Collection
The methods also vary. You need to pick out the most appropriate method for answering your research question. Several methods refer to quantitative analysis only, while others refer to a qualitative one. Even if you use the same techniques, such as case studies, observations, or surveys, you can use numbers for calculating frequencies in quantitative research and words to describe your observations and answers to open-ended questions in the qualitative approach.
Some methods are widely used for one research method and rarely for the other. Let’s look at them in more detail.
Quantitative Methods
Here, we would like to highlight the following:
- Observations are used for researching subjects in environments where variables cannot be controlled. They are called natural environments.
- Surveys involve close-ended or multiple-choice questions that are asked within a sample in different forms - by phone, in person, or online.
- Experiments are conducted in situations where you can control and manipulate variables to establish cause-and-effect connections.
Qualitative Methods
As we can assume, they are different from those used in quantitative research. They include:
- Focus groups where your aim is to collect the opinions from individuals via discussion of the topic.
- Literature reviews imply surveys about works created by other authors.
- Interviews use open-ended verbal questions.
- Ethnography means involvement in an organization or community activity during a certain period to observe people’s behavior and cultural ways closer.
Use of Quantitative and Qualitative Research
The problem lies in making the right decision on using appropriate quantitative or qualitative methods. The tips are the following:
- You can use qualitative research when you want to get a deeper understanding of experiences, concepts, or ideas.
- Quantitative research is appropriate when your aim is to test or confirm a theory or hypothesis.
Remember
You can opt for qualitative, quantitative, or mixed approaches while researching different topics. Your choice will also depend on either the inductive or deductive approach you want to consider, the content of research questions, the type of research (correlational, descriptive, or experimental), and the ease of access to respondents.
Let’s take such a research question as ‘How happy are students about their academic course?’
Quantitative Research
Suppose you want to survey 250 students from your university by asking them to assess the level of their satisfaction with the professor on a scale from 1 to 5. Then, you can make a statistical analysis and conclude that about 4.3 rate on average is the level of these students’ satisfaction.
Qualitative Research
You can do the research by having interviews with 12 students only. You ask them open-ended questions. For example, ‘What do you think the most positive aspect of your study program is?’ or ‘What would you like to improve in your studies?’
The answers become the basis for the follow-up questions. You need to record and transcribe the interviews. There is special transcription software available online for this purpose. You need to find the patterns and common things in the students’ answers.
Mixed Research
You need interviews here as well. You are sure to find out new insights and things you have never thought about from the answers to open-ended questions. Then, you will be able to use the closed-ended questions and scale to test the correctness of those insights.
Or you can apply the procedure in another way. First, conduct a survey to get quantitative information about general trends, and then have an interview with several students to understand the reasons for the received quantitative information.
Analysis of Quantitative and Qualitative Data
These two types of data cannot prove or object something. They do not demonstrate any trends either. You need to analyze the data properly to make it work for your research question. Methods of analysis are also different for quantitative and qualitative data.
Quantitative Data Analysis
This data consists of numbers. Math or statistical analysis is suitable here. The latter is more advanced. These techniques will help you detect commonalities or differences in the data. Then, you can demonstrate the results with the help of tables or graphs. You can use various apps, such as Excel or SPSS, to calculate the following:
- correlation or causation between the two variables;
- average patterns and scores;
- validity and reliability of obtained results;
- the number of particular answers to the same question.
Qualitative Data Analysis
The analysis here is more complicated. It deals with images, words, or videos instead of numbers. So, you need to know and use the following approaches:
- content analysis which involves considering meanings, positions, and frequency of certain words and phrases;
- discourse analysis which deals with communication in different social contexts;
- thematic analysis, which researches the data to find the common patterns and themes.
Final Thoughts
You need to know the main characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research methods to choose the right way to deal with your research question. On this basis, you will formulate the correct and effective conclusions to demonstrate that your academic research was successful and that you managed to obtain the best results.