Quantitative research

• Qualitative research


  A highly subjective research discipline, designed to look beyond the percentages to gain an understanding of feelings, impressions and viewpoints
• Quantitative research


  A numbers-based research discipline, statistically measures attitudes, behaviour, and performance and provides results in percentages that are easier to interpret
• Qualitative research

  • Utilizes smaller, highly targeted samples
  • Expert moderators use a multitude of techniques to obtain in-depth information
  • Interviews are lengthy, allowing the moderator to elicit extremely candid, highly complex responses
  • Results in rich, in-depth data laden with insight unobtainable from quantitative research techniques
• Qualitative research

  • Flexible
  • Highly-focused
  • Designed to be completed quickly
  • Readers relate to the findings easily
• Aim of qualitative research


  To understand experience as nearly as possible as its participants feel it or live it
• Quantitative research


  • Statistically measures attitudes, behaviour, and performance
  • Provides results in percentages that are easier to interpret
  • Yields data that's projectable to a larger population
  • Effectively translates data into easily quantifiable charts and graphs
• Quantitative paradigm


  • Based on positivism - science is characterized by empirical research; all phenomena can be reduced to empirical indicators which represent the truth
  • There is only one truth, an objective reality that exists independent of human perception
  • Investigator and investigated are independent entities, so the investigator can study a phenomenon without influencing it or being influenced by it
• Quantitative research

  • Concerned with the collection and analysis of data in numeric form
  • Tends to emphasize relatively large-scale and representative sets of data
• Quantitative research


  • Control - enables the scientist to identify the causes of observations
  • Operational definition - terms must be defined by the steps or operations used to measure them
  • Replication - data obtained must be reliable and repeatable
  • Hypothesis testing - systematic creation and empirical testing of hypotheses