Research Methodology: Qualitative and Quantitative Research

Qualitative and Quantitative research approaches are very important to understand for anyone working for his/her dissertation. Qualitative research approach basically includes a range of interpretive research techniques, mostly used for naturally occurring phenomena’s in social research for developing theories. While quantitative research approach basically attempts to exactly measure phenomena under study in quantified form and helps in answering questions like how much, how often, how many, when, and who. Qualitative research is very useful for theory building and quantitative research approach is very useful in testing theories.

 Research involvement is very high in qualitative research in comparison to quantitative research so there is quite of high risk of research bias and subjectivness of researcher in the qualitative approach.  Researcher is a participant or catalyst in the qualitative research approach. However, in quantitative approach, there is very limited involvement of researcher and involvement is controlled to prevent any bias.

Researcher may only know roughly in advance what are his/her research objectives while in quantitative approach research has clarity about his/her research objectives. Sample size is small in qualitative research while in quantitative research, sample size is quite large. Sample design is mainly nonprobability in qualitative research while in quantitative research it is probability based. Data in the qualitative approach is very verbal in words or pictures form while in quantitative research data is mainly in form of numbers.  In qualitative approach, researcher is one of the key data collection tool while in quantitative research, data is mainly collected through questionnaires/surveys. In qualitative approach, data is collected mainly through case studies, interviews, observations etc.

Understanding of qualitative and quantitative approach is very important for deciding what research methodology you would follow for your dissertation. If you need any further help with your dissertation research methodology, please visit our website www.dissertationhelpservice.com or email us to info@dissertationhelpservice.com