Question 5:

Explain quantitative and qualitative methodology. Which of the methodology

you would prefer the most and why?

Answer:
1. Qualitative Research:
Qualitative research is one which provides insights and understanding of the
problem setting. It is an unstructured, exploratory research method that
studies highly complex phenomena that are impossible to explain with the
quantitative research. Although, it generates ideas or hypothesis for later
quantitative research.
Qualitative research is used to gain an in-depth understanding of human
behaviour, experience, attitudes, intentions, and motivations, on the basis of
observation and interpretation, to find out the way people think and feel. It is a
form of research in which the researcher gives more weight to the views of the
participants. Case study, grounded theory, ethnography, historical and
phenomenology are the types of qualitative research.
Qualitative analysis is concerned with the analysis of data that cannot be
quantified. This type of data is about the understanding and insights into the
properties and attributes of objects (participants). Qualitative analysis can get
a deeper understanding of “why” a certain phenomenon occurs. The analysis
can be used in conjunction with quantitative analysis or precede it.

Approaches to qualitative research:

Quantitative research is used to understand how people experience the world.
While there are many approaches to qualitative research, they tend to be
flexible and focus on retaining rich meaning when interpreting data.
 Grounded theory: Researchers collect rich data on a topic of interest
and develop theories inductively.
 Ethnography: Researchers immerse themselves in groups or
organizations to understand their cultures.
 Action research: Researchers and participants collaboratively link
theory to practice to drive social change.
  Phenomenological research: Researchers investigate a phenomenon
or event by describing and interpreting participants’ lived experiences.
 Narrative research Researchers: examine how stories are told to
understand how participants perceive and make sense of their
experiences.

Qualitative research methods:

Each of the research approaches involve using one or more data collection
methods. These are some of the most common qualitative methods:

 Observations: recording what you have seen, heard, or encountered in

detailed field notes.
 Interviews: personally asking people questions in one-on-one
conversations.
 Focus groups: asking questions and generating discussion among a group
of people.
 Surveys: distributing questionnaires with open-ended questions.
 Secondary research: collecting existing data in the form of texts, images,
audio or video recordings, etc.

Research example:
Qualitative researchers often consider themselves “instruments” in research
because all observations, interpretations and analyses are filtered through
their own personal lens.
For this reason, when writing up your methodology for qualitative research, it’s
important to reflect on your approach and to thoroughly explain the choices
you made in collecting and analysing the data.

Qualitative data collection:

There are a variety of methods of data collection in qualitative research,
including observations, textual or visual analysis (eg from books or videos)
and interviews (individual or group). 1 However, the most common methods
used, particularly in healthcare research, are interviews and focus groups.

Qualitative data analysis:

Qualitative data can take the form of texts, photos, videos and audio. For
example, you might be working with interview transcripts, survey responses,
field notes, or recordings from natural settings.
Most types of qualitative data analysis share the same five steps:

1. Prepare and organize your data. This may mean transcribing interviews or
typing up field notes.
2. Review and explore your data. Examine the data for patterns or repeated
ideas that emerge.
3. Develop a data coding system. Based on your initial ideas, establish a set of
codes that you can apply to categorize your data.
4. Assign codes to the data. For example, in qualitative survey analysis, this
may mean going through each participant’s responses and tagging them with
codes in a spreadsheet. As you go through your data, you can create new
codes to add to your system if necessary.
5. Identify recurring themes. Link codes together into cohesive, overarching
themes.

When to use qualitative research:

Researchers make use of qualitative research techniques when they need to
capture accurate, in-depth insights. It is very useful to capture “factual data”.
Here are some examples of when to use qualitative research.
 Developing a new product or generating an idea.
 Studying your product/brand or service to strengthen your marketing
strategy.
 To understand your strengths and weaknesses.
  Understanding purchase behaviour.
 To study the reactions of your audience to marketing campaigns and
other communications.
 Exploring market demographics, segments, and customer groups.
 Gathering perception data of a brand, company, or product.

Advantages of qualitative research:

Qualitative research often tries to preserve the voice and perspective of
participants and can be adjusted as new research questions arise. Qualitative
research is good for:

 Flexibility:
The data collection and analysis process can be adapted as new ideas or
patterns emerge. They are not rigidly decided beforehand.
 Natural settings:
Data collection occurs in real-world contexts or in naturalistic ways.
 Meaningful insights:
Detailed descriptions of people’s experiences, feelings and perceptions can be
used in designing, testing or improving systems or products.
 Generation of new ideas:
Open-ended responses mean that researchers can uncover novel problems or
opportunities that they wouldn’t have thought of otherwise.

Shortcomings of qualitative research:

Researchers must consider practical and theoretical limitations in analysing
and interpreting their data. Qualitative research suffers from:
 Unreliability:
The real-world setting often makes qualitative research unreliable because of
uncontrolled factors that affect the data.
 Subjectivity:
 Due to the researcher’s primary role in analyzing and interpreting data,
qualitative research cannot be replicated. The researcher decides what is
important and what is irrelevant in data analysis, so interpretations of the
same data can vary greatly.
 Limited generalizability:
Small samples are often used to gather detailed data about specific contexts.
Despite rigorous analysis procedures, it is difficult to draw generalizable
conclusions because the data may be biased and unrepresentative of the wider
population.
 Labour-intensive:
Although software can be used to manage and record large amounts of text,
data analysis often has to be checked or performed manually.

Limitations of Qualitative Research:

• The problem of adequate validity or reliability is a major criticism. Because of
the subjective nature of qualitative data and its origin in single contexts, it is
difficult to apply conventional standards of reliability and validity.
• Contexts, situations, events, conditions and interactions cannot be replicated
to any extent nor can generalisations be made to a wider context than the one
studied with any confidence.
• The time required for data collection, analysis and interpretation is lengthy.
• Researcher's presence has a profound effect on the subjects of study.
• Issues of anonymity and confidentiality present problems when selecting
findings.
• The viewpoints of both researcher and participants have to be identified and
elucidated because of issues of bias.
 2. Quantitative research:

Quantitative research is the process of collecting and analyzing numerical data.

It can be used to find patterns and averages, make predictions, test causal
relationships, and generalize results to wider populations.
Quantitative research is the opposite of qualitative research, which involves
collecting and analyzing non-numerical data (e.g. text, video, or audio).
Quantitative research is widely used in the natural and social sciences: biology,
chemistry, psychology, economics, sociology, marketing, etc.

Approaches to quantitative research:

This research method us used to seek facts and cause of social phenomenon
without regard to the subjective state of individual.
Like if you distribute questionnaire so I have nothing to do with it. It only
depends upon the people among whom you distribute.

Quantitative research question examples

How has the average temperature changed globally over the last century?
Does environmental pollution affect the prevalence of honey bees?
Does working from home increase productivity for people with long
commutes?

Quantitative data collection methods:

Surveys: List of closed or multiple choice questions that is distributed to a
sample (online, in person, or over the phone).
Experiments: Situation in which variables are controlled and manipulated to
establish cause-and-effect relationships.
Obsrvations: Observing subjects in a natural environment where variables
can’t be controlled.
Interviews: Asking open-ended questions verbally to respondents.
Focus groups: Discussion among a group of people about a topic to gather
opinions that can be used for further research.
Ethnography: Participating in a community or organization for an extended
period of time to closely observe culture and behavior.
Literature review: Survey of published works by other authors.
Receive feedback on language, structure and layout

Quantitative data analysis:

Once data is collected, you may need to process it before it can be analyzed.
For example, survey and test data may need to be transformed from words to
numbers. Then, to analyze your data, you can use descriptive and/or
inferential statistics to answer your research questions.

Advantages of quantitative research:

Quantitative research is often used to standardize data collection and
generalize findings.
Replication:
Repeating the study is possible because of standardized data collection
protocols and tangible definitions of abstract concepts.
Direct comparisons of results:
The study can be reproduced in other cultural settings, times or with different
groups of participants. Results can be compared statistically.
Large samples:
Data from large samples can be processed and analyzed using reliable and
consistent procedures through quantitative data analysis.
Hypothesis testing:
Using formalized and established hypothesis testing procedures means that
you have to carefully consider and report your research variables, predictions,
data collection and testing methods before coming to a conclusion.
Drawbacks of quantitative research:
Despite the benefits of quantitative research, it is sometimes inadequate in
explaining complex research topics. Its limitations include:
 Superficiality:
Using precise and restrictive operational definitions may inadequately
represent complex concepts. For example, the concept of mood may be
represented with just a number in quantitative research, but explained with
elaboration in qualitative research.
 Narrow focus:
Predetermined variables and measurement procedures can mean that you
ignore other relevant observations.
 Structural bias:
Despite standardized procedures, structural biases can still affect quantitative
research. Missing data, imprecise measurements or inappropriate sampling
methods are biases that can lead to the wrong conclusions.
 Lack of context:
Quantitative research often uses unnatural settings like laboratories or fails to
consider historical and cultural contexts that may affect data collection and
results.

Limitations:
• Because of the complexity of human experience it is difficult to rule out
or control all the variables;
• Because of human agency people do not all respond in the same ways as
inert matter in the physical sciences;
• Its mechanistic ethos tends to exclude notions of freedom, choice and
moral responsibility;
• Quantification can become an end in itself.
• It fails to take account of people's unique ability to interpret their
experiences, construct their own meanings and act on these.
• It leads to the assumption that facts are true and the same for all people
all of the time.
 • Quantitative research often produces banal and trivial findings of little
consequence due to the restriction on and the controlling of variables.
• It is not totally objective because the researcher is subjectively involved
in the very choice of a problem as worthy of investigation and in the
interpretation of the results.
• The type of research and the format of research findings are limitations
as well.

Differences between Qualitative and Quantitative research

methods:
 Qualitative data is not countable. It’s pieces of text, photos, videos, and
so on. Quantitative data can be counted as it’s numerical.

 Qualitative data is usually unstructured, which means it’s not ordered or

grouped logically. You can turn qualitative data into structured
quantitative data through analysis methods like coding.

 Most of the time qualitative data will be collected from a smaller sample
size than quantitative data because generally, you’re not looking for
statistical significance with qualitative research.

 Qualitative data is quite rich, and can give you directional insights about
people’s thoughts, feelings, emotions, and so on. Quantitative data can
help to give you more confidence about a trend, and allow you to derive
numerical facts.

 Qualitative research is holistic in nature while quantitative research is

particularistic.

 The qualitative research follows a subjective approach as the researcher

is intimately involved, whereas the approach of quantitative research is
 objective, as the researcher is uninvolved and attempts to precise the
observations and analysis on the topic to answer the inquiry.

 Qualitative research is exploratory. As opposed to quantitative research

which is conclusive.

 The reasoning used to synthesise data in qualitative research is inductive

whereas in the case of quantitative research the reasoning is deductive.

 Qualitative research is based on purposive sampling, where a small

sample size is selected with a view to get a thorough understanding of
the target concept. On the other hand, quantitative research relies on
random sampling; wherein a large representative sample is chosen in
order to extrapolate the results to the whole population.

 Verbal data are collected in qualitative research. Conversely, in

quantitative research measurable data is gathered.

 Inquiry in qualitative research is a process-oriented, which is not in the

case of quantitative research.

 Elements used in the analysis of qualitative research are words, pictures,

and objects while that of quantitative research is numerical data.

 Qualitative Research develops the initial understanding whereas

quantitative research recommends a final course of action.

 Qualitative Research is conducted with the aim of exploring and

discovering ideas used in the ongoing processes. As opposed to
quantitative research the purpose is to examine cause and effect
relationship between variables.
  Lastly, the methods used in qualitative research are in-depth interviews,
focus groups, etc. In contrast, the methods of conducting quantitative
research are structured interviews and observations.

Why choose Quantitative Research over Qualitative

Research?
Quantitative research is more preferred over qualitative research because it is
more scientific, objective, fast, focused and acceptable. However, qualitative
research is used when the researcher has no idea what to expect. It is used to
define the problem or develop and approach to the problem.

1. The quantitative approach allows us to reach a higher

sample size:
When you have the ability to study a larger sample size for any hypothesis,
then it is easier to reach an accurate generalized conclusion. The additional
data that you receive from this work gives the outcome greater credibility
because the statistical analysis has more depth to review. A larger sample
makes it less likely that outliers in the study group can adversely impact the
results you want to achieve impartially.

2. We can collect information quickly when using quantitative

research:
Researchers collect information for the quantitative research process in real-
time scenarios so that statistical analysis can occur almost immediately.
Experiments, surveys, and interviews provide immediate answers that become
useful from a data-centered approach. Fewer delays in the acquisition of these
resources makes it easier to find correlations that eventually lead toward a
useful conclusion.
 Quantitative research doesn’t require the separation of systems or the
identification of variables to produce results. That’s why it is a straightforward
process to implement.

3. Quantitative research uses randomized samples:

When research participants suspect that a study wants to achieve a specific
result, then their personal bias can enter into the data spectrum. The answers
provided on the included materials are partial truths or outright lies as a way
to manipulate the work. That’s why the quantitative approach is so useful
when trying to study a specific hypothesis within a large population
demographic.
This approach uses a randomized process to collect information. That excludes
bias from appearing in most situations. It also provides an advantage in the
fact that the data can then get statistically applied to the rest of the
demographic being studied. There is always a risk of error to consider, but it is
this method that typically supplies the most factual results.

4. Results duplication is possible when using quantitative

research:
When opinions are a valid substitute for facts, then anything becomes
possible. Quantitative research eliminates this problem because it only focuses
on actual data. The work validates itself because the results always point
toward the same data, even though randomized conditions exist. There can be
minute variations found over time, but the general conclusions that
researchers develop when using this process stay accurate.
That’s why this information is useful when looking at the need for specific
future outcomes. The facts provide statistics that are suitable to consider when
difficult decisions must get made.

5. Quantitative research can focus on facts or a series of

information:
 Researchers can use the quantitative approach to focus on a specific fact that
they want to study in the general population. This method is also useful when
a series of data points are highly desirable within a particular demographic. It is
a process that lets us understand the reasons behind our decisions, behaviors,
or actions from a societal viewpoint.
When we can comprehend the meaning behind the decisions that people
make, then it is easier to discover pain points or specific preferences that
require resolution. Then the data analysis can extend to the rest of the
population so that everyone can benefit from this work.

6. The research performed with the quantitative approach is

anonymous:
As long as researchers can verify that individuals fit in the demographic profile
of their study group, there is no need to provide personal information. The
anonymous nature of quantitative research makes it useful for data collection
because people are more likely to share an honest perspective when there are
guarantees that their feedback won’t come back to haunt them. Even when
interviews or surveys are part of this work, the personal information is a
screening tool instead of an identifying trademark.

7. Quantitative research doesn’t require direct observation to

be useful:
Researchers must follow specific protocols when using the quantitative
method, but there isn’t a requirement to directly observe each participant.
That means a study can send surveys to individuals without the need to have
someone in the room while they provide answers. This advantage creates a
better response rate because people have more time and less pressure to
complete the work.

8. Control-sensitive:
The researcher has more control over how the data is gathered and is more
distant from the experiment. An outside perspective is gained using this
method.
9. Less biased/objective:
The research aims for objectivity i.e. without bias, and is separated from the
data. Researcher has clearly defined research questions to which objective
answers are sought.

10. Focused:
The design of the study is determined before it begins and research is used to
test a theory and ultimately support or reject it.

11. Repeatable:
The research study can usually be replicated or repeated, given its high
reliability.

12. Arranged in simple analytical methods:

Received data are in the form of numbers and statistics, often arranged in
tables, charts, figures, or other non-textual forms.

13. Generalizable:
Project can be used to generalize concepts more widely, predict future results,
or investigate causal relationships. Findings can be generalized if selection
process is well-designed and sample is representative of a study population.

14. Relatable:
Quantitative research aims to make predictions, establish facts and test
hypotheses that have already been stated. It aims to find evidence which
supports or does not support an existing hypothesis. It tests and validates
already constructed theories about how and why phenomena occur.

15. More structured:

Researcher uses tools, such as questionnaires or equipment to collect
numerical data.

16. Pertinent in later stages of research:

Quantitative research is usually recommended in later stages of research
because it produces more reliable results.

17. Consistent with data:

With quantitative research, you may be getting data that is precise, reliable
and consistent, quantitative and numerical.

18. More acceptable:

It may have higher credibility among many influential people (e.g.,
administrators, politicians, sponsors, donors)

19. Useful for decision making:

Data from quantitative research—such as market size, demographics, and user
preferences—provides important information for business decisions.

20. Scientific Approach:

Quantitative research methods are considered to be the preferred approach to
academic research, with infrequent allowances for qualitative methodologies
to be utilized when the research subjects (more often than not, human
subjects) refuse to be codified into a robust analytical construct. As the name
implies, quantitative research produces numbers that facilitate measurement,
assessment and inference.

21. Hypothetico-Deductive:
Advocates argue that the greatest strength of quantitative research is the clear
grounding in theory: hypotheses are developed to test variants on established
theories in order to refine them based on those identified variables. This
doesn’t prove the established theories but rather improves them with
additional datasets that support or align with the original results.
Using a sample population that may be much larger than for a qualitative
study, data can be collected fairly quickly using survey tools via email or
telephone, and the availability of statistical software allows for precise and
accurate data analysis. The potential for research bias is limited to design of
the study, design of the survey tool, and interpretation of data, as opposed to
the broader risk of observer bias in a qualitative study.

22. The Predictive Power of Statistics:

Since quantitative research data is delivered in numerical form, we can apply
statistical tests to that data to produce descriptive measurements that can
then be used to make predictions within the confines of the degree to which
the sample population can be considered to be representative of a larger
population.

23. Irreproducibility And False-Positives:

The ability to delineate specific variables in the development of a hypothesis
provides quantitative research with an inherent reproducibility. Since you’re
testing variants of an established theory rather than proposing a new theory,
researchers that attempt to validate your study with all the same protocols in
place, should be able to replicate your results. When that doesn’t happen, the
protocol is examined to verify that it matches with the original, and if that
checks out, the original dataset should be next on the list, assuming, of course,
that the authors of the study you are attempting to validate are willing to share
that data.

24. Can be tested and checked:

Quantitative research requires careful experimental design and the ability for
anyone to replicate both the test and the results. This makes the data you
gather more reliable and less open to argument.

25. Straightforward analysis:

When you collect quantitative data, the type of results will tell you which
statistical tests are appropriate to use. As a result, interpreting your data and
presenting those findings is straightforward and less open to error and
subjectivity.

26. Prestige:
Research that involves complex statistics and data analysis is considered
valuable and impressive because many people don't understand the
mathematics involved. Quantitative research is associated with technical
advancements like computer modelling, stock selection, portfolio evaluation,
and other data-based business decisions. The association of prestige and value
with quantitative research can reflect well on your small business.