Difference Between Qualitative and Quantitative Research

The difference between Qualitative and Quantitative Research is to understand the key fields of research and learning to differentiate between one and the other. In the field of business, science and technology, economics, etc, they use two standard ways of conducting research.

Quantitative research is generally expressed in numbers or represented using graphs, whereas qualitative research is expressed using the words for the given data sets. 

Quantitative research is a more methodical approach to solving problems by generating and using data, this method is much more methodical in solving. This form of research is used in quantifying data and variables into concrete data. The surveys used in the Quantitative Research includes online surveys, paper surveys and other forms of survey used to complete the research.

Qualitative Research

• A method for developing a better understanding of human and social sciences, in understanding human behaviour and personalities better
• It employees a subjective approach
• It is generally expressed using words
• It has open-ended questions
• The qualitative research needs only a few respondents
• The data collection methods involved are interviews, focus groups, literature review, ethnography
• Qualitative research is holistic in nature
• The reasoning used to synthesis data in this research is inductive
• This method involves a process-oriented inquiry
• It develops the initial understanding of data
• The data taken in the Qualitative research method is pretty verbal
• The objective of this research method is to engage and discover various ideas
• It is one of the exploratory research type methods

Quantitative Research

• It is the method used to generate numerical data by using a lot of techniques such as logical, statistical and mathematical techniques
• It employees an objective approach
• It is expressed using the graphs and numbers
• It has multiple choice questions
• The quantitative research requires many respondents
• The data collection methods involved are experiments, surveys, and observations expressed in  numbers
• Quantitative Research is particularistic in nature
• The reasoning used to synthesis data in this research is deductive
• This method does not involve a process-oriented inquiry
• It recommends a final course of action
• The data taken in this method is pretty measurable
• The main objective of Quantitative research is to examine the cause and effect between the variables
• It is a conclusive research type method