Skip to Main Content
Today's Hours:

Research Skills Hub

Is it Quantitative... or Qualitative?

Quantitative Research is:

  • The dominant 'research framework' in the social sciences and the hard sciences
  • It's a set of strategies, techniques and assumptions used to study phenomena and answer questions through the exploration of numeric patterns
  • Quantitative research includes methodologies such as questionnaires, structured observations or experiments
  • Used to generate knowledge and create understanding about the world by using scientific inquiry and data that are observed or measured to examine questions / hypotheses about our reality

Allen, M. (2017). The SAGE encyclopedia of communication research methods (Vols. 1-4). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc doi: 10.4135/9781483381411
Coghlan, D., Brydon-Miller, M. (2014). The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vols. 1-2). London, : SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781446294406

Qualitative Research is:

  • A process of 'naturalistic inquiry' that seeks an in-depth understanding of social phenomena within their natural setting.
  • It focuses on the "why" rather than the "what" of social phenomena and relies on the direct experiences of human beings as meaning-making agents in their every day lives.
  • Rather than by logical and statistical procedures, qualitative researchers use multiple systems of inquiry for the study of human phenomena including biography, case study, historical analysis, discourse analysis, ethnography, grounded theory, and phenomenology.

From: University of Utah College of Nursing, (n.d.). What is qualitative research? [Guide] Retrieved from https://nursing.utah.edu/research/qualitative-research/what-is-qualitative-research.php#what 

Quantitative & Qualitative Research Methods (short video)

Compare the Two

Qualitative vs Quantitative Research
QUALITATIVE QUANTITATIVE
Methods include focus groups, unstructured or in-depth interviews, and reviews of documents for types of themes Surveys, structured interviews, measurements & observations, and reviews of records or documents for numeric or quantifiable information
A primarily inductive process used to formulate theory or hypotheses A primarily deductive process used to test pre-specified concepts, constructs, and hypotheses that make up a theory
More subjective: describes a problem or condition from the point of view of those experiencing it More objective: provides observed effects (interpreted by researchers) of a program on a problem or condition
Text-based Number-based
More in-depth information on a few cases Less in-depth but more breadth of information across a large number of cases
Unstructured or semi-structured response options Fixed response options, measurements, or observations
No statistical tests Statistical tests are used for analysis
Less generalizable More generalizable

Adapted from https://www.orau.gov/cdcynergy/soc2web/Content/phase05/phase05_step03_deeper_qualitative_and_quantitative.htm