QUANTIVITE VERSUS QUALITATIVE

As much as I crave the sweet sensation of blogging about quantitative methods, and cant think of anything worse than not sharing my expansive knowledge on the topic on a fortnightly basis with the blogging community… I think it’s time for a change of scenery. Okay, too much sarcasm?  Anyway, regardless of my actual rather poor level of statistical knowledge we’ve been told we can venture into the world of qualitative methods this week.

As a rather pessimistic student the thought of numbers and equations sends shivers of fear through my spine. I find im much better describing findings in words, much more so than with numbers.. Because they mean fairly little to me never mind any one else. Qualitative methods on the other hand.. Has always seemed to be the more relaxed side of research methods. Fluffy and friendly. Surely words cannot harm me? Sticks and stones and all that.

I fear I’m hugely mistaken…and I have no doubt I shall soon find out. But in the mean time  I will argue that Qualitative methods are just as important as quantitative methods!

In Miles & Humbermans 1994  ‘Qualitative Data Analysis’ D.T Campbell asserts that “all research ultimately has a qualitative grounding’. Whereas Fred Kerlinger is quoted as saying ” there is no such things as qualitative data everything is either 1 or 0″. Researchers have long debated the topic – so basically a bit of banter. What would the work place be without it ay?

One part of the debate is that Quantitaive methods often ‘forces’ answers from their participants. Providing categories or numbers the participants must assign themselves too, but in fact might feel they don’t actually fit. Qualitative methods enables us to gain a better understanding of each individual by asking for much more descriptive data. Though the transcripting process may be harrowing – is it not worth it for getting more honest and reflective data? Quantitaive data can’t reeeeally describe to you what I had for tea today, unless you managed to write it on a calculator. cheeky.

In terms of the role of the researcher themselves it could be argued that though a quantative approach (should) lead to a completely objective, valid, reliable set of results. Which is all we need. Why should we settle for the bare minimum? Using a qualitative approach can prove extremely useful here. The researcher often immerses themselves within focus groups and interviews etc. and in delving deeper the researcher can potentially discover some really interesting information. Maybe areas of the topic they’d not previously thought of. The beauty of qualitative methods is that we don’t need a hypothesis to begin, the research often creates the hypothesis for us. Surely this would suggest that it’s beneficial to first use qualiative methods before using quantitative. I don’t know about you but I’d rather come 1st in a race. Unless you’re going by the “first the worst, second the best” analogy. But then youd be being childish..

Okay, I’ll admit it. We need numbers. Particularly during the later stages. “People remember 20% of what they read, but can remember 80% of what they SEE, hear and do.  If your presentation consists of reading your slides, one of you is redundant” (Farmer, 2007).  I want to point out ‘see’ here. We need numbers to create graphs, giving us a simple visual of our data.

So logically if both methods had pros, they should work well in conjunction with each other. Snyder 1995 set out to prove this; using areas of both methods in her classroom computer assisted writing experiment. There were both treatment and control groups, but she also used interviews at the beginning and end of a trial to supplement her findings. After this research Snyder suggests that we can use methods simultaneously if Studies are carried out carefully.

Over all I think it’s fair to say qualitative is up there with quantitaive methods. Maybe it’s the case that quants is seen as a more scientific method, But more often than not they need each other. Cute hey?