1. Quantitative versus Qualitative Approaches©

2. At the start of your research project….
After you have decided upon your research question, you need to decide what approach you are going to take:
Quantitative?
Qualitative?
Ask yourself are you seeking to prove or disprove a theory? Or are you trying to generalise your findings to a population?
If so this will be a deductive approach, a quantitative approach
Or are you hoping to elicit some understandings on what people think or feel about an issue? Is the topic an area that there is little information and so you must undertake an initial, exploratory study?
If so, this will be induction, a qualitative approach

3. Hypotheses Confirmed or Rejected
Deductive Theory
Theory
Hypotheses
Data Collection
Findings
Hypotheses Confirmed or Rejected
Revision of Theory
This the most common view of the relationship between theory and social research. You develop a theory and test it. Induction is the opposite direction form deduction. Researcher infers the implications of his/her findings for the theory that prompted the whole exercise. The findings are fed back into the stock of theory. So theory is the outcome of research, while findings or observations are the outcome. Sometimes, you will use both: view of a theory may change after more reading of literature, new findings may be published by others before you have generated yours or the relevance of a set of data for a theory may become apparent after the data have been collected.

4. [General research question]
Induction
[General research question]
Observation
Theory Formulation
Inductive theory starts with a vague concept then uses specific forms of observations of empirical evidence, on the basis of this, you generalise and build theories.

5. Home Exercise Deductive theory: Inductive theory:
Test the theory that people who have never done research before will attend a research methods course to do research in the future
Inductive theory:
Why do people do a research methods course?
What is your theory on this?
What other information have you gathered?
Any demographics?

6. Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
Deductive
Tests hypotheses
Positivism
Objectivism
Employs measurement
Macro
Detached researcher
Qualitative:
Inductive
Produces theories
Phenomenology
Constructionism
Does not employ measurement
Micro
Involved researcher

7. Quantitative and Qualitative Methods
Constructs social meaning
Focus on interactive processes
Values are present
Authenticity is key
Context constrained
Few cases
Thematic analysis
Quantitative:
Measures objective facts
Focuses on variables
Value free
Reliability is key
Independent of context
Many cases
Statistical analysis

8. Common errors: Open ended questions in surveys
Sometimes people say that they use thematic analysis to analyze open ended questions on a questionnaire/survey. This is incorrect! Thematic analysis is a very specific form of analysis where the data is searched for recurring themes and theory then built from it.
For open ended questions, you post-hoc code. Quantitative by its nature, ‘quantifies’, so after you have collected your answers, you attach codes to responses. And so you can count the types of responses you received.

9. Common errors: ‘Generalising’ in qualitative research
Sometimes you’ll come across people saying that the qualitative study was small scale and so the findings cannot be generalised to a population. This shows lack of understanding!
Qualitative research never seeks to generalise. It is important that when reporting findings that you use the terminology and methods appropriate to the approach - e.g. don’t use ‘hypothesis’ pertaining to qualitative and if using statistical analysis in quantitative, ALWAYS make sure your sampling is random! [Sampling is the most important step in quantitative work, yet so many get it wrong]

10. Main Steps in Quantitative Research:
Theory
Hypothesis
Research design
Devise measures of concepts
Select research site(s)
Select research subjects/respondents
Administer research instruments/ collect data
Process data
Analyse data
Write up findings and conclusions

11. Main Steps in Qualitative Research:
General research question
Select relevant site(s) and subjects
Collection of relevant data
Interpretation of data
Conceptual and theoretical work
Tighter specification of the research question
Collection of further data
Write up findings

12. Examples of Quantitative Research Methods:
Experiments
Social surveys
Cross-sectional
Comparative (cross-national)
Longitudinal
Content Analysis
Secondary Statistical Analysis
Official Statistics
Demography
Epidemiology
Field stimulations
Structured Interviews and Observation.

13. Examples of Qualitative Research:
In-depth Interviews
Focus Groups
Ethnography/Field Research
Historical-Comparative Research
Discourse Analysis
Narrative Analysis
Media Analysis

14. Worth noting
Quantitative and qualitative research are often cast as opposing fields.
But sometimes they blur - qualitative research may employ quantification in their work or may be positivist in their approach. Some quantitative may employ phenomenology.
Both can be also be combined in a project
Qualitative can facilitate quantitative research (1) can provide hypotheses
(2) fill in the gaps, help interpret relationships
Quantitative can facilitate qualitative through locating interviewees and help with generalising findings
Together they can give you a micro and macro level versions and so you can examine the relationships between the two levels. They can complement each other.

15. Final words
To make it easier to understand the two different approaches, I sometimes tell students to think of TV detectives.
Induction - this is the method that CSI use. They find the evidence and then produce the theory on what happened.
Deductive logic - this is your more traditional detective. They have a hunch that someone murdered someone else and seek to prove it. Think Columbo, Murder She Wrote or even Inspector Morse.