Quantitative vs Qualitative Research: Breaking Down the Debate

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Quantitative v Qualitative

A debate that you will often hear amongst researchers is the benefits of both quantitative and qualitative research. Often, researchers will have their preferences and will see it as the superior approach. Quantitative Researchers will argue that qualitative research can’t compete with the validity and scale that scientific research offers, whereas Qualitative Researchers would counter this with quantitative research not being able to compete with the descriptive richness or detail of qualitative research. This can all get a little bit confusing, so let’s break down the pros and cons of each.

Quantitative

Strengths:

• Research is objective which negates any room for bias or misinterpretation.

• Methods such as questionnaires and surveys allow you to collect huge amounts of data quickly and can be done at a relatively low cost.

• Results can be measured scientifically, which allows for a simpler analysis process.

• Research can be easily repeated, which improves validity.

Weaknesses:

• One of the main problems associated with quantitative research is its limited ability to add detail and answer the ‘why’ questions.

• Another weakness is that quantitative research cannot account for how social reality is created and maintained, or how people understand behaviour and create opinions.

• Quantitative research can often also be found guilty of providing a snapshot of what is happening at a certain moment in time and therefore can become outdated very quickly.

Qualitative

Strengths:

• Qualitative research can produce rich detailed descriptions including participants’ feelings, opinions and experience whilst also explaining the meaning of their actions.

• It gives the researcher a more holistic understanding of the research, the topic and the participant.

• Qualitative research opens up the possibility of participant research, which allows for the researcher to form their own opinion and understanding.

• The methods are a lot more agile and allow the researcher to tailor the research to the specific topic or client.

Weaknesses:

• Qualitative research relies a lot more on the skill and experience of the researcher to control an interview or focus group and make sure their own bias does not influence the participants.

• Research is time consuming and therefore low sample sizes give less generalisable results.

• The results are subjective and completely down to the researcher’s interpretation.

• The results have a lower validity as they cannot be measured scientifically/statistically.

The above is only a snapshot of the debate between Qualitative and Quantitative Researchers and only becomes more complicated when we add in the approach of Mixed Methods Researchers, but that is for another time!

What do you think – what is your preferred research method?