How do you determine if your study is qualitative or quantitative?

There's this ongoing (unnecessary) debate about what methodology is best for studies. Honestly, both qualitative and quantitative methodologies are amazing in their own right. I like using mixed methods (a combination of qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches) for studies or projects, but we'll dive into that later.

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Let's Start with the Basics

• What is qualitative methodology?

Qualitative methodology is used in studies or scenarios where we want to understand the experience(s) of the participant(s). It provides a unique perspective or description on how and why an individual is feeling an emotion, their perception as an example during their experience of the topic of interest. Basically, it provides contextual information of the study which then the researcher will analyze and present.

What can you use qualitative methodology for?

Well, if you're in the research world, you can use qualitative methodology to understand the "why." A lot of times, researchers will conduct case studies, general inquiry, ethnography, and phenomenological studies to collect and analyze data. With my research, I was able to conduct interviews as a method of data collection which allowed the participants to expand on their emotions, perceptions and experiences of my research topic. This provided amazing insight as to why they felt, perform, or make decisions the way they did.

But you can use qualitative methods in different settings, such as social media, and business settings. For example, many businesses send out surveys to employees to complete and have sections that allow the participant to provide their perception, feeling, experience etc based on the question. Once completed, the researcher will review the written responses, find patterns and themes, and make a conclusion of the data they find. The great thing about businesses utilizing qualitative methodology is they are able to gain a better understanding of what is doing well or needs improvement, and then can apply the results to make changes to improve a metric, such as a key performance indicator (KPI).

• What is quantitative methodology?

Quantitative methodology uses quantifiable factors or variables to determine cause-and-effect, correlational, and direct relationships between two factors. What is being measured will be a numerical value which will allow the researcher to determine if there is a relationship present and if the findings are statistically significant or not. For example, during my undergraduate practicum, I trained shelter dogs those preferred behaviors (i.e., sitting on command, laying, not pulling on the leash and walking at the handler's side, and not jumping on someone). So we would keep track of the number of times the dog performed a target behavior, and if they did it 10 consecutive times, we would state that the dog is trained. Or, for those in the wonderful world of applied behavior analysis, we can determine if the independent variable is impacting the target behavior (dependent variable). So let's say we want to decrease attention-seeking behavior, if the individual does a behavior to gain attention, we can measure how many times that behavior has occurred. And in a perfect world, if we remove the attention that reinforces that behavior, we will see a decrease in the number of occurrences.

What can you use quantitative methodology for?

Oh my goodness, the list is insane! Also, I touched on two scenarios where quantitative methodology can be used. But here's another example, I do a lot of reporting for my full-time, so most of my day consist of reviewing quantitative data. However, I've been working on inclusion surveys, where a few questions have Likert scales. This survey is distributed every quarter, and I review the data to determine if we are improving or declining in various areas, basically determining trends. It definitely helps to determine if something that's recently been implemented has been improving or declining the scores or ratings. Here are a few more examples where you can use quantitative methodology.

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What if you want to use both, qualitative and quantitative, methodologies?

So if this is the case, then mixed methods will be your go-to. Mixed methods utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methodological approaches. I like using mixed methods because we gain a descriptive understanding in why a participant may have chose a rating or number as the response to the question(s) asked. The quantitative aspect can help us determine trends, while the support of the qualitative data can provide the "why" the quantifiable data is trending the way it is.

Mixed methods is actually the methodology I'm using for the inclusion surveys. I present a question that has the participant chose an answer that is best fit with their opinion, and then the question right after allows them a space to elaborate on why they chose the response they did. After the survey is closed, I review the quantitative data first to get descriptive statistics and trends and compare to prior surveys sent out. Then, I review the written responses to determine any patterns and themes, while comparing them to responses from prior surveys. I truly enjoy doing this type of research!

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Let's chat about it! What's your preferred methodology and why? Feel free to provide what methodological approach(es) you use too!

- Candace (@TheStudentForLife)