Skip to Main Content

Differences between Qualitative and Quantitative Research

QUALITATIVE QUANTITATIVE
Methods include focus groups, unstructured or in-depth interviews, and reviews of documents for types of themes Surveys, structured interviews, measurements & observations, and reviews of records or documents for numeric or quantifiable information
Primarily inductive process used to formulate theory or hypotheses Primarily deductive process used to test pre-specified concepts, constructs, and hypotheses that make up a theory
More subjective: describes a problem or condition from the point of view of those experiencing it More objective: provides observed effects (interpreted by researchers) of a program on a problem or condition
Text-based Number-based
More in-depth information on a few cases Less in-depth but more breadth of information across a large number of cases
Unstructured or semi-structured response options Fixed response options, measurements, or observations
No statistical tests Statistical tests are used for analysis
Less generalizable More generalizable

Adapted from https://www.orau.gov/

Determining Article Type

Use this tutorial to determine whether or not the article you have found is original research and if so, what type of research methods that were used for the study.