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UNDERSTANDING QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

What is Quantitative Research?

Quantitative Research is a tool for empirical research that more closely resembles research in the hard sciences.

While hard sciences such as chemistry and biology gather data through experiments, Quantitative Research in the social sciences uses empirical observation in the form of statistical and mathematical measures to make meaning of things.

To better illustrate the difference between Quantitative and Qualitative research methods, let's return to the example of John, who was hired to determine which burger is the best one in town.

Instead of conducting interviews as in the previous example exemplifying Qualitative Research, John decides to collect data on the number of burgers sold from each restaurant on an average day. His assumption here is that the restaurant that sells the most burgers has the best burgers.

Using the statistical data John collects, he concludes that the best burger in town is from McDonald's. McDonald's sells more than 9,000 burgers each day in the city. This is 2,000 more than Burger King and more than twice the number of Jack in the Box burgers sold on an average day.

As you can see from this example, radically different conclusions can be reached on the same research topic depending on the methodology the researcher chooses to employ. Through employing Qualitative Research by interviewing a random assortment of people he finds on the street, John determined the answer to be Local Boy's Tavern. However, Quantitative Research based on statistical evidence led him to conclude that McDonald's has the best burger.

One of the most challenging areas in research – both for the scholars engaged in research as well as those interpreting research for professional purposes – is determining which research methodology is appropriate for gaining the kinds of data necessary to increase knowledge on a particular subject.

While historically, Quantitative Methods have tended to be more widely accepted as sources of data than Qualitative Methods, the gap between the two is narrowing.

Quantitative Methods and Applications

Quantitative Methods collect data through a number of means, such as:

• Instruments such as surveys and questionnaires. • Controlled experiments and manipulation of variables • Accessing previously collected empirical data.

The use of Quantitative Methods is historically fundamental to academia and is applied in a variety of ways in the social sciences.

Survey instruments are a very common method in social science research. For example, political science and public administration disciplines make great use of data collected by the U.S. Census Bureau. Probably the most well-known Quantitative Research method used by the U.S. Census Bureau is the once-per-decade survey that collects data about race, income, age and other characteristics of each household.

The fields of psychology and education frequently use measurement instruments. Psychometrics, for instance, are used to measure things such as intelligence and personality traits. Educational measurement instruments include tests measuring academic achievement in areas such as reading and mathematics.

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