Qualitative vs

Quantitative Research

1

byNour Bani Melhim

English Dept.

2

Qualitative Research is an umbrella covering several forms of inquiry that help us understand and explain the meaning of social phenomena with as little disruption to the natural setting as possible.

مكانها في ما مشكلة بحث هو النوعي البحث : في العنف ظاهرة مالحظة مثال الطبيعي المدارس

There is typically a high level of researcher involvement with subjects; strategies of participant observation and in-depth, unstructured interviews are often used. The data produced provide a description, usually narrative, of people living through events in situations. (Boyd, 2001)

والقيام وغيرها والمقابلة المالحظة باستخدام معلومات بجمع يقوم النوعي الباحثمثال : المدرسة داخل الطبيعي مكانها في المشكلة او الظاهرة بوصف

3

Qualitative research is a study, which is conducted in a natural setting where the researcher, an instrument of data collection, gathers words or pictures, analyzes them inductively, focuses on the meaning of participants, and describes a process that is both expressive and persuasive in language.

) ووصفها ) وتحليلها المشاركين من كلمات او صور المعلومات بجمع الباحث يقوم النوعي البحث في

4

Qualitative research is an effort to understand situations in their uniqueness as part of a particular context and the interactions there (Denscombe, 2010).

والروابط التفاعالات بمعرفة ويقوم حدوثها مكان في المعلومات بجمع النوعي الباحث يقومالمشكلة اجزاء بين

5

Creswell (2012) defines qualitative study as: “Qualitative research is an inquiry process of understanding based on distinct methodological traditions of inquiry that explore a social or human problem. The researcher builds a complex, holistic picture, analyzes words, report detailed views of informants, and conducts the study in a natural setting.”

6

Characteristic.. Typically qualitative findings are in the form of themes, categories, concepts or tentative hypotheses or theories.The product of a qualitative study is richly descriptive.

فرضيات , و تصنيفات مفاهيم و موضوعات شكل على تكون النوعي البحث في النتائجنظريات او تجريبية

7

8

A second characteristic of all forms of qualitative research is that the

researcher is the primary instrument for data collection and

analysis.اداة نفسه هو النوعي البحث في الباحث يعدبمالحظة : يقوم من هو الباحث مثال البحثاو بكتابة ويقوم المدارس في العنف مشكلة

مالحظته يتم ما تصوير

Not measurements, but WORDS!

Instead of asking how many times someone purchased an item, you ask "WHY"?...

Typically the samples are small, and not "random“

االرقام عن عوضا الكلمات يستخدم النوعي البحثوالمقايس

9

Most frequent uses

Understanding basic issueswhy do people buy/use our product?

Pretesting ideas or questionsdo people want a product that cleans their refrigerator?

Message testingHow do people like this ad?

Recommended to capture the basic feel of a problem prior to conducting a more analytical study

10

Types of Qualitative Data

1.Interviews

2.Observations

3.Documents

11

Types of Qualitative Data1. Interviews

Open-ended questions and probes yield in-depth responses about people’s experiences, opinions, perceptions, feelings and knowledge.

Data consist of verbatim quotations with sufficient context to be interpretable.

12

Types of Qualitative Data cont.

2. ObservationsFieldwork descriptions of activities, behaviors, actions, conversations, interpersonal interactions, organizational or community processes, or any other aspect of observable human experience .

Data consist of field notes: rich detailed descriptions, including the context within which the observations were made.

13

3. DocumentsWritten materials and other documents, programs records; memoranda and correspondence; official publications and reports; personal diaries, letters, artistic works, photographs, and memorabilia; and written responses to open-ended surveys.

Data consists of excerpts from documents captured in a way that records and preserves context.

14

Other Qualitative Data

Depth Interview: An unstructured interview that seeks opinions of respondents on a one-to-one basis.

Useful for sensitive issues, politics etc.Protocol Analysis: Involves placing a person in a decision making situation and asking him/her to state everything he/she considers in making a decision. Useful in 1. Purchasing involving a long time frame (car, house) and 2. Where the decision process is too

short (greeting card).Projective technique: Involve situations in which participants are placed in simulated activities hoping that they will divulge information about themselves that are unlikely to be revealed under direct questing.

15

Strengths Weaknesses•Volume of data. و كبيره نتائجه

كثيرة•Complexity of analysis . صعوبة

النتائج تحليل•Time-consuming nature of the

clerical efforts require , يتطلب

و البحث اعداد في وقتطويل

النتئج تحليل•Can’t extrapolate to the whole population على • النتائج تعليم يمكن ال

مشابهه دراسات16

• Good for examining feelings and

motivations. الشعور معرفة

والتحفيز

• Allows for complexity and depth of

issues. الموضوع صلب في الدخل

وتفاصيله

• Provides insights.

Quantitative? Qualitative? Quantitative—involves use of numerical indices to summarize, describe and explore relationships among traits—reliance on control, statistics,

measurements, and experiments

Qualitative—emphasis is on conducting studies in natural settings using mostly verbal descriptions, resulting in stories and case studies, not statistical

reports

17

A Comparison of Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Qualitative Research Quantitative Research

Basic researchobjective

To gain a broad qualitativeunderstanding of theunderlying reasons andmotivations;As a first step inmultistage research

To quantify the data andgeneralize the resultsform the sample to thepopulation of interest;Recommend a finalcourse of action

Type of sampleused

Small numbers of non-representative cases

Large number ofrepresentative cases

Data collectionMethod

Unstructured Structured

Nature of dataanalysis

Non-statistical Statistical

18

Qualitative Quantitative

"All research ultimately has a qualitative grounding"

- Donald Campbell

"There's no such thing as qualitative data. Everything is either 1 or 0"

- Fred Kerlinger

The aim is a complete, detailed description.

The aim is to classify features, count them, and construct statistical models in an attempt to explain what is observed.

Researcher may only know roughly in advance what he/she is looking for.

Researcher knows clearly in advance what he/she is looking for.

Recommended during earlier phases of research projects.

Recommended during latter phases of research projects.

The design emerges as the study unfolds. All aspects of the study are carefully

designed before data is collected.

Researcher is the data gathering instrument.

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

Data is in the form of words, pictures or objects.

Data is in the form of numbers and statistics.

Subjective - individuals� interpretation of events is important ,e.g., uses participant observation, in-depth interviews etc.

Objective � seeks precise measurement & analysis of target concepts, e.g., uses surveys, questionnaires etc.

Qualitative data is more 'rich', time consuming, and less able to be generalized. 

Quantitative data is more efficient, able to test hypotheses, but may miss contextual detail.

Researcher tends to become subjectively immersed in the subject matter.

Researcher tends to remain objectively separated from the subject matter. 19

Quantitative research is:

"a formal, objective, systematic process in which numerical data are utilised to obtain information about the world"

(Burns and Grove cited by Cormack 1991 p 140).

20

Quantitative Qualitative

Both are systematic in their approac h

Objective Subjective

Deductive Inductive

Generalisable Not generalisable

Numbers Words 

21

Quantitative research is thought to be objective whereas qualitative research often

involves a subjective element.

It is thought that in gaining, analyzing and interpreting quantitative data, the

researcher can remain detached and objective.

Often this is not possible with qualitative research where the researcher may actually be involved in the situation of the research.

22

Consider a study being undertaken into waiting times in the Accident & Emergency (A&E) Department of a hospital.

A quantitative study, measuring how long people wait, can be purely objective.

However if the researcher was wanting to discover how patients felt about their waiting time, they would have to come into contact with the patients and make judgments about the way they answered their questions.

If the researcher asked the patient "how are you feeling having waited an hour to be seen by the doctor?" they would almost certainly register the patients non-verbal behaviour as well as document the response; in this way the researcher is adding a subjective element to the study. 23

Quantitative research is inclined to be deductive.

In other words it tests theory.

This is in contrast to most qualitative research which tends to be inductive.

In other words it generates theory.

24

Using the A&E waiting time example again, the quantitative approach might test the hypothesis that "

Patients attending this A&E department do not wait for more than one hour to be seen by a doctor".

A qualitative approach which explores the feelings of patients who wait an excessive time to be seen by the doctor might generate the theory that "patients who experience an excessive wait to be seen by the doctor experience an enlargement of the symptoms that brought them to the department". 25

Quantitative designs of research tend to produce results that can be generalised.

Using our A&E example, we should find that, at least for the department under consideration, the results of the quantitative study tend to hold true. Providing, of course, that the research was conducted in an appropriate manner using appropriate sampling techniques.

However, qualitative studies tend to produce results that are less easy to generalise.

This has to do with the problem of the sample used at the time. We all know, for example, that our feelings about waiting can change dependent on our particular set of circumstances. Even if the researcher encountered the same group of clients on another day, they may find different results. Generally, it is difficult to generalise with qualitative results.

26

Quantitative research uses data that are structured in the form of numbers or that

can be immediately transported into numbers.

If the data can not be structured in the form of numbers, they are considered qualitative.

(Note that qualitative data can sometimes be handled in such a way as to produce quantitative data. e.g. the researcher

exploring feelings of patients can analyse the responses in clusters that are negative

or positive so as to produce a figure/percentage of negative patient and

positive patient feelings). 27

The majority of medical research is quantitative (and considered to produce

"hard", generalisable results) whilst much of nursing research is qualitative (and considered to produce "soft" results).

28

Types of quantitative research include: Descriptive Quasi-experimental Experimental

Some authors (see Burns & Grove 2nd Edn. 1993) include a fourth type of design known as a correlational (Ex post facto)

study although others would dispute whether this is a quantitative approach to

research

29

Basically, experimental and quasi-experimental studies are designed to

examine cause and effect.

These studies are usually conducted to examine the differences in dependent

variables thought to be caused by independent variables (treatments).

Descriptive and correlational studies examine variables in their natural

environments and do not include researcher imposed treatments.

30

Experimental designThe paradigm for scientific method in research is the true experiment or randomised control trial (RCT). Typical examples of RCT's include drug trials.

Experimental designs are set up to allow the greatest amount of control possible so that causality may be examined closely.

The three essential elements (OHP) of experimental design are:

Manipulation : The researcher does something to at least some of the participants in the research Control : The experimenter introduces one or more controls over the experimental situation. Randomisation : The experimenter assigns participants to different groups on a random basis. (adapted from Polit & Hungler 4th Edn.1997)

31

The classic example is the before-after design or pre-test post-test design. This is perhaps the most commonly used experimental design. Comparison of pre-test scores allows the researcher to evaluate how effective the randomisation of the sample is in providing equivalent groups. The treatment is fully under control of the researcher. The dependent variable is measured twice during the study (before and after the manipulation of the independent variable). Example : Drug trials

32

33

34

A development of the pre-test post-test design is known as the Solomon 4-group design. Although somewhat cumbersome this design effectively measures the influence pre-testing has on post-test scores. It is a stronger tool than the pre-test post-test design but requires more

complicated statistical analysis of the data obtained.

35

Factorial designs are a further development of the experimental technique which allow for two or more different characteristics, treatments, or events to be independently varied within a single study. This is a logical approach to examining multiple causality.

36

Quasi-experimental designs were developed to provide alternate means for examining causality in situations which were not conducive to experimental control.

The designs have been developed to control as many threats to validity as possible in situations where at least one of the three elements of true experimental research is lacking (i.e. manipulation, randomisation, control group).

37

Quasi-experimental designs

There are too many types of Quasi-experimental design (see Burns & Grove 1993 pp.305-316)

Most are adaptations of experimental designs where one of the three elements is missing.

An example could be where the researcher uses groups (control and treatment) which have evolved naturally in some way rather than being randomly selected. This is a quasi-experimental approach using non-equivalent control groups.  

38

Descriptive designs are designed to gain more information about a particular characteristic within a particular field of study. A descriptive study may be used to, develop theory, identify problems with current practice, justify current practice, make judgments or identify what others in similar situations may be doing. There is no manipulation of variables and no attempt to establish causality.

39

Descriptive designs

Correlational studies as already mentioned are not universally accepted as a form of quantitative research.

As already noted they are also know as ex post facto studies. This literally means "from after the fact".

The term is used to identify that the research in question has been conducted after the variations in the independent variable has occurred naturally.

40

Correlational studies

The basic purpose of this form of study is to determine the relationship between variables. However the significant difference from experimental and quasi-experimental design is that causality cannot be established due to lack of manipulation of independent variables. "Correlation does not prove Causation"

41