Dr.Mohammed Saleh Al.Ansari

Qualitative and Quantitative Research ( Lecture 1 & 2 & 3)

July 7, 2010

The Main Points for Qualitative and Quantitative Research could be summarizing as following:

• Qualitative research involves analysis of data such as words (e.g., from interviews), pictures (e.g., video), or objects (e.g., an artifact). It is used to gain a broad qualitative understanding of the underlying reasons and motivations; and could be reckoned as a first step in multistage research
• Quantitative research involves analysis of numerical data and used to quantify the data and generalize the results form the sample to the population of interest; Recommend a final course of action.
• The strengths and weaknesses of qualitative and quantitative research are a perennial, hot debate, especially in the social sciences.  The issues invoke classic ‘paradigm war’.
• The personality / thinking style of the researcher and/or the culture of the organization is under-recognized as a key factor in preferred choice of methods.
• Overly focusing on the debate of “qualitative versus quantitative” frames the methods in opposition.  It is important to focus also on how the techniques can be integrated, such as in mixed methods research.  More good can come of social science researchers developing skills in both realms than debating which method is superior.
• The Type of the samples used are for qualitative Small numbers of non-representative cases where it is Large number of representative cases for quantitative
• The Data collection Method for qualitative are Unstructured where it is otherwise for quantitative research i.e Structured. The Nature of data analysis in qualitative is Non-statistical and for quantitative research is Statistical.  

Hit here for Lecture One   Two  Three

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