Evaluation and comparison of qualitative and quantitative methods are frequent tasks for many students and researchers regardless of their experiences and degrees. Research remains fundamental in various fields, including social sciences, medicine, healthcare, or management. Compared to qualitative methods, which are characterized by their goals and the necessity to understand some specific aspects of social life, quantitative research aims to measure and identify something (McCusker & Gunaydin, 2014). The task of a person who works within the frames of qualitative research is to understand the worth of personality and succeed in self-assessment or reflection, while qualitative researchers deal with statistics and introduce a general idea supported by personal interest (Choy, 2014). Therefore, it is wrong to believe that only qualitative research focuses on people and their interests. The way of how quantitative researchers gather and analyze data may be interesting to a wide range of the public.
There are many attitudes to qualitative and quantitative research. For example, Barczak (2015) admits that it is wrong to believe that writing a qualitative project is easier than writing a quantitative project. Both types of work have their challenges and benefits, and much depends on a person and the already developed skills. A deductive approach is used in terms of quantitative studies, and an inductive approach helps to build a theory in a qualitative approach (Barczak, 2015). There is no good or bad research method for students. The main idea is that some people can be better predisposed to some kind of work and less interested in another approach. As a result, many people continue paying their attention to the possibility to use both qualitative and quantitative methods and introduce strong mixed methods research.
References
Barczak, G. (2015). Publishing qualitative versus quantitative research. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 32(5), 658–658. Web.
Choy, L. T. (2014). The strengths and weaknesses of research methodology: Comparison and complimentary between qualitative and quantitative approaches. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 19(4), 99-104. Web.
McCusker, K., & Gunaydin, S. (2014). Research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed methods and choice based on the research. Perfusion, 30(7), 537-542. Web.