What Approach Should I Take: Qualitative Or Quantitative – Statswork

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What Approach Should I Take: Qualitative Or Quantitative – Statswork
In practice, Data collection and Data Analysis involves two approaches: Qualitative and Quantitative approaches. Each approach has diverse kinds of objectives and statistical methodology. Quantitative research Methodology is useful in testing the assumptions and theories which are already Qualitative research is useful in understanding the concepts and formulating the theories. Experimental research and surveys are examples of quantitative research.

Quantitative Research

It focuses on testing the hypothesis we claim about the problem.

Expressed by numbers, tables, and graphs

Needs many observations

The questionnaire should be in closed form i.e. with multiple-choice questions

Qualitative Research

It focuses on developing and formulating a hypothesis

Expressed by words or text

Needs a few observations

The questionnaire may be in an open form i.e. respondents can write a few sentences about the question asked.

Data Collection methods:

Quantitative Research: Quantitative data collection involves four different types. They are:

Experimental data: In this case, the variables are known and are being controlled to understand the causes and effects.

Survey Data: Here, the data collection is in the form of questionnaire but it should be in closed form as mentioned earlier and the survey can be done through any mode such as direct, telephonic, or online forms.

Direct Observation: Here, the data is collected by observing the respondent either by letting them know about that or not. In addition, the variables for the study cannot be controlled in this type of data collection.

Content Data analysis: It records the number of times a certain word is present in the textual data and analyze the pattern of them.

For the Quantitative method, I will collect or survey 400 samples of students from the university and ask them to answer for the satisfaction they got with their professors teaching on a scale from 1–5. Then, with the collected data**,** statistical data analysis is performed and I can draw conclusions. For example, the students got satisfaction with their professors on an average of 4.5.

For the Qualitative method, I will select a few students to say 30 students and ask for the satisfaction in their studies with a few open-ended questions. The students write their opinion verbally and those are then used for analyzing the patterns of satisfactions.

To sum up, quantitative methods provide generalized results and it considers as a valid one. But it doesn’t mean you should use only the quantitative method. The choice between qualitative and quantitative research is up to you. Make a clear decision of choosing the research method by defining the exact research problem and the method of data collection and go for the suitable Research Methodology