Quantitative and qualitative

research
Bouchaib Benzehaf
Applied Language and Culture Studies Lab
Department of English
Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences
Chouaib Doukkali University
 Preliminaries
• Research: Systematic investigation
• Validity and reliability: Concepts to evaluate research
• Quantitative: Quantification (quantity)
• Qualitative: Use of non-numerical data
• Deductive: Theory to data
• Inductive: Data to theory
• Abductive: Interaction between theory and data.
Research paradigms
The research onion (Saunders, M., Lewis, P., & Thornhill, A., 2015)
 Research: Definition
 Research in common parlance refers to a
search for knowledge.
 One can also define research as a scientific
and systematic search for pertinent
information on a specific topic.
 Research is an art of scientific investigation.
 Research: Definition

 Research comprises defining and redefining

problems, formulating hypothesis or suggested
solutions; collecting, organising and evaluating
data; making deductions and reaching
conclusions; and at last carefully testing the
conclusions to determine whether they fit the
formulating hypothesis.
Purpose of research
 Motivations in research
1. Desire to get a research degree along with its
consequential benefits;
2. Desire to face the challenge in solving the
unsolved problems, i.e., concern over practical
problems initiates research;
3. Desire to get intellectual joy of doing some
creative work;
4. Desire to be of service to society;
5. Desire to get respectability.
 Types of research
• Basic – to determine or establish fundamental facts
and relationships within a discipline or field of study.
Develop theories
• Applied – undertaken specifically for the purpose of
obtaining information to help resolve a particular
problem
• The distinction between them is in the application
– Basic has little application to real world policy and
management but could be done to guide applied research

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 The Process of Research
• Step 1: The process is initiated with a question or problem

• Step 2: Next, goals and objectives are formulated to deal

with the question or problem

• Step 3: Then the research design is developed to achieve

the objectives

• Step 4: Results are generated by conducting the research

• Step 5: Interpretation and analysis of results follow

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Development of a research question
 Reliability VS validity
Reliability and validity are concepts used to evaluate the
quality of research. They indicate how well a method,
technique or test measures something. Reliability is
about the consistency of a measure, and validity is about
the accuracy of a measure.
 Research approaches
Two basic approaches to research, viz.,
quantitative approach and the qualitative
approach.
Quantitative approach
 Qualitative approach
A qualitative approach is one in which the inquirer often makes
knowledge claims based primarily on constructivist
perspectives (i.e. the multiple meanings of individual
experiences, meanings socially and historically constructed,
with an intent of developing a theory or pattern) or
advocacy/participatory perspectives (i.e. political, issue-
oriented, collaborative or change oriented) or both. (Creswell,
2003, p.18
 Qualitative and quantitative
• Quantitative research tends to be associated with numbers
and producing charts and graphs; it tends to be about
counting and measuring things.

• Qualitative research tends not to include numbers. It uses

words, thoughts and images to show things which aren’t
easily quantifiable.
 Qualitative and quantitative
• Quantitative research tends to be associated with the
positivist paradigm; qualitative with the interpretivist
paradigm.

• However, it is important to remember that quantitative and

qualitative are not incompatible; they can complement
each other.

• Much research uses a mixed methods approach.

 Exercise
Determine whether the following statements are about
qualitative or quantitative data:
• The baby weighs 20 pounds.
• My friend is very happy.
• Joe has $ 100.
• The sky is greyish-blue.
The continuum
 Mixed methods research
• Mixed methods research is a methodology for conducting
research that involves collecting, analysing and
integrating quantitative (e.g., experiments, surveys)
and qualitative (e.g., focus groups, interviews) research. 

• This approach to research is used when this integration

provides a better understanding of the research problem
than either of each alone.
 Mixed methods research
• By mixing both quantitative and qualitative research and data,
the researcher gains in breadth and depth of understanding and
corroboration, while offsetting the weaknesses inherent to
using each approach by itself. 

• One of the most advantageous characteristics of mixed

methods research is the possibility of triangulation, i.e., the
use of several means to examine the same phenomenon. 

• Triangulation allows one to identify aspects of a phenomenon

more accurately by approaching it from different vantage
points using different methods and techniques. 
 Exercise: what type of research is it?
1. Conducting an experiment to investigate whether having regular
rest breaks during a prolonged study session improves
performance.
2. Observing the effects of using a treat as a reward to teach a dog
to sit on command.
3. Using a written questionnaire with closed-ended questions to
survey a large number of bushfire victims who may be
experiencing post-traumatic stress disorder.
4. Observing the social interactions of pre-school children in a
playgroup using pre-determined items on an observation checklist.
5. Investigating the effects of observing violence by analysing and
interpreting children's drawings after they have watched violent
cartoons on television.
 Exercise (follows)
6. Testing the relationship between the scores on an intelligence
test and scores on a personality test.
7. Observing whether drivers conform to road rules by counting
the number of drivers who disobey a stop sign at an intersection.
8. Organising a small number of participants into a discussion
group to study the experience of sexual discrimination in the
workplace.
9. Investigating ways in which females are portrayed in the print
media by analysing newspaper and magazines advertisements.
10. Studying the behaviour of newborn infants by observing and
recording their second-by-second movements during their first
72 hours of life following birth.
 Quantitative Research questions

• Usually start with ‘ how,’ ‘what’ or ‘why’.

• Contain an independent and a dependent variable.

• Look at connections, relations or comparisons

between variables.
 Qualitative Research questions
• Usually start with ‘what’ or ‘how’ (avoid beginning
qualitative questions with ‘why’ as this implies cause and
effect).

• Identify the central phenomenon you plan to explore (tell

in your question what you are going to describe, explore,
generate, discover, understand).

• Avoid the use of quantitative words such as relate,

influence, effect, cause.
 Exercise: what type of questions are these?

• How often do people aged 30 to 40 visit their

parents?
• What is it like growing up in a single-parent family in
a rural environment?
• What are the experiences of people working night
shifts in health care?
• Does a stressful work environment lead to higher
turnover rates?
 Types of qualitative research
 Ethnography: one of the most popular and widely recognized
methods of qualitative research; it immerses researcher in a
culture with the goal being to learn and describe the culture's
characteristics. Rather than relying on interviews or surveys,
you experience the environment first hand, and sometimes as a
“participant observer.”
 Phenomenology: describes how any one participant experiences
a specific event. It utilizes interviews, observation and surveys
to gather information from subjects.
 Grounded theory: explain why a course of action evolved the
way it did. Grounded theory looks at large subject numbers.
Theoretical models are developed based on existing data.
 Types of qualitative research
 case study: provides an in-depth look at one test subject. The
subject can be a person or family, business or organization, or a
town or city. Data is collected from various sources and
compiled using the details to create a bigger conclusion.
 Narrative: weaves together a sequence of events, usually from
just one or two individuals to form a cohesive story. You
conduct in-depth interviews, read documents, and look for
themes. Often interviews are conducted over weeks, months, or
even years, but the final narrative doesn’t need to be in
chronological order. Rather it can be presented as a story (or
narrative) with themes, and can reconcile conflicting stories and
highlight tensions and challenges which can be opportunities for
innovation
  Focus  Data Collection
 Method  Sample Size

Observation &
Ethnography Context or culture  —
interviews
Individual Stories from
 Narrative experience &  1 to 2 individuals &
sequence documents

People who have

 Phenomenological experienced a  5 to 25 Interviews
phenomenon

Develop a theory Interviews, then

Grounded Theory grounded in field  20 to 60 open and axial
data coding
Organization, Interviews,
 Case Study entity, individual,  — documents, reports,
or event observations
 Types of quantitative research
 Survey Research: the most elementary tool for all sorts of
quantitative research techniques. The very most important
purpose of the research is to widely explain the characteristics of
a particular group or a bunch of population.
 Descriptive research: seeks to explain the current status of an
identified variable. The aim of descriptive research is to explain
and interpret, the current status of people, settings, conditions, or
events. The researcher does not usually begin with the
hypothesis, however, it is probably going to develop one after
collecting the information.
 Correlational research: is used to establish a relationship between
two or more variables and to determine how one impacts the
other. This type of research will recognize trends and patterns in
data, but it does not go so far in its analysis to observe the
different patterns.
 Types of quantitative research
 Casual-Comparative research: is employed to conclude the
cause-effect equation between two or more variables, where one
variable depends on the opposite experimental variable. An
independent variable is not manipulated by the experimenter,
and the effects of the independent variable is on the dependent
variable are measured. Casual-Comparative research is a
method that works on the process of comparison. Once analysis
and conclusions are made, deciding about the causes should be
done fastidiously, as other different variables, each far-famed
and unknown, might still have an effect on the result.
 Types of quantitative research
 Experimental research: uses the scientific method to establish
the cause-effect relationship among a group of variables that
make up a study. The true experiment is often thought of as a
laboratory study, but this is not always the case; a laboratory
setting has nothing to do with it. A true experiment is any study
where an effort is made to identify and impose control over all
other variables except one. An independent variable is
manipulated to determine the effects on the dependent variables.
Subjects are randomly assigned to experimental treatments
rather than identified in naturally occurring groups.
 Types of quantitative research

 Meta-analysis: a synthesis of available studies about a topic to

arrive at a single summary. It combines the results of several
studies that address a set of related hypotheses. A key benefit of
this approach is the aggregation of information leading to a
higher statistical power and more robust point estimate than is
possible from the measure derived from any individual study.
 Components of a paper
• Title
• Abstract
• Introduction
• Theoretical framework
• Literature Review
• Methods
• Results
• Discussion
• Conclusion
• References
 Components of an abstract
An abstract summarizes, usually in one paragraph of 300
words or less, the major aspects of the entire paper in a
prescribed sequence that includes: 1) the overall purpose
of the study and the research problem(s) you investigated;
2) the basic design of the study; 3) major findings or
trends found as a result of your analysis; and, 4) a brief
summary of your interpretations and conclusions.
Thanks!