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Qualitative research methods produce descriptive dates in the widest sense, for example, spoken language, observable behaviour, as well as people's own written text. The study of qualitative research focuses on people's life experiences, emotions, sentiments, cultural phenomena and social movements. Qualitative researchers express sympathy and recognition to the individuals they study to comprehend the views of these persons or their spectators. This is an inductive study in which qualitative researchers develop concepts, understanding, and insights into data patterns rather than data gathering to assess bias assumptions, theories, or models. In the qualitative research, the goal of the inductive theorization process is to establish theory. Furthermore, the theory is supposed to be based on data from the data itself (Aspers & Corte, 2019). The researchers of the qualitative method observed the settings and the individual or group variables were therefore carefully examined. In the qualitative research, people's personal experiences as well as their daily skirmishes in society are studied. In this study, the concepts of suffering, pain, frustration, love and beauty have been learned, so in other studies, research methods will lose their essence. In the qualitative research, researchers analysed how people think and behave in their daily lives. The study was interpreted as naturalism, and the strategies employed by researchers are similar to people's behaviours in everyday life, often interacting with the others in an unobtrusive and natural way. Interviews are modelled afterward a normal discussion in a qualitative research interview, rather than formal question-and-answer exchange. The purpose of the qualitative research is to study things from different angles. In addition, the insights of teachers and students are as significant as others (Chesebro & Borisoff, 2016). This approach can be consistent with the world of experience. It ensures a close match between data and people views.
The subject material may be assessed in extra detail. The research context can be mobile, also based upon incoming or accessible data. The qualitative research data based upon human experience as well as observation. The collected data has predictive quality. The qualitative research works within a flowing structure (Malina, Nørreklit & Selto, 2011). Data complexity can be included in the generated decisions. Creativity becomes the ideal quality in the qualitative research. There are few benefits to using the qualitative research methods and techniques. First, the qualitative research methods produce a rough description of the participants' perceptions, opinions, as well as experiences; also explain the proper meaning and importance of their behaviour (O'Byrne, 2007). For example, in language testing, Bachman (1998) showed in his research that qualitative research results provide a particularly profound relationship between the information processing and performance (Rahman, 2016). Secondly, few people believe that the qualitative research methods (interpretativeism) understand human experience in particular environment as a whole.
In addition to the advantages, there are few limitations are obvious. Qualitative research methods sometimes ignore relative sensitivity and focus more on the experience and meaning. For example, the phenomenological methods attempt to explain, reveal, as well as to understand the experience of participants. Second, policy makers might have low credibility with the outcomes or results of the qualitative methods. On the other hand, stakeholders often apply quantitative research when investigating research (O'Byrne, 2007). In the practice of education in the United States, national and state policy maker’s effort to quantify the teachers as well as students performance, and in several social sciences, quantitative directions are mostly considered more. Additionally, pure qualitative research might ignore the social as well as cultural structure of variables studied (Rahman, 2016). Quality of data collected in the qualitative research is very particular. The data inflexibility is much difficult to evaluate and prove. The mining data gathered through the qualitative research may be very lengthy. The data generated by qualitative research is not accepted always. The impact of the researcher will have an adverse impact on the data collected. Through qualitative research, copying results may be very tough. Difficult decisions might require repeated qualitative study periods.
Researchers are interested in studying why people elect not to buy health insurance. The researcher wanted to understand the numerous reasons people made this choice and the obstacles people might have if they chose not to get the insurance. It is an open question and will not give results which will help with statistical analysis. So, this is an example of a qualitative approach that should be used.
The Quantitative research is centred upon the analysis of objective actualities, statistics and numerical data. For instance, if you want to ascertain the quantity of a fertilizer that is most conducive to the growth of petunia, you can measure the amount of a fertilizer and compute the amount of a plant growth for each fertilizer (Larson-Hall & Plonsky, 2015). This kind of a research is based upon numbers as well as clear, specific, measurable facts. Though quantitative research approaches work very well in the laboratory underneath strictly controlled circumstances, it is much difficult to assess behaviour of human in natural environment. Investigation tools are vulnerable to errors, for example, faulty sampling methods and measurement errors. Another drawback is that the quantitative research comprises numbers; nevertheless, few topics are tough to measure. For instance, it would be tough to create an operative survey of closed-ended-questions regarding how persons fall in love. The quantitative approaches stress objective measurement as well as statistical, numerical or mathematical study of the data gathered through the polls, surveys and questionnaires, or manipulation of the pre-existing statistics by applying computational methods. The emphasis of the quantitative research is on gathering numerical data and encompassing it to population or illuminating specific phenomena. Before constructing a quantitative study, you should determine whether it is experimental or descriptive, as it will determine how you collect, analyse, and understand the results. Descriptive research is reined by the subsequent guidelines: subjects are usually quantified once; the goal is to establish only associations amid variables; then, the study can comprise sample population of the hundreds or thousands of subjects to make sure that the pair has been obtained valid estimation of the generalized relationship amid variables. The experimental design comprises subjects measured before as well as after a specific treatment; sample population might be very small as well as purposefully selected, and is projected to establish a causal relationship between the variables.
A major difficulty is that, results of the quantitative research are effortless to quantify and the outcomes may be visibly revealed by the objective data. Equated with the qualitative research, it is much difficult to contend with outcomes of the quantitative research. Qualitative research is centred much on the observations than on the numerical data (Savela, 2018).Due to its numerical base, it is simpler to make estimates based upon quantitative data. The capability to extend the quantitative data into predictions is main advantage.
One drawback of the quantitative data is that it may not be utilized to elucidate the social occurrences that make it less beneficial in areas, for example, sociology.
The quantitative data may disclose you what is going on, however, it can't understand why. For this perception, you need a qualitative study based on observation (Westerman, 2015).
Quantitative research may not explain non-numerical information, for example, human emotions, imagination or beliefs.
For instance, researchers might want to ascertain the link amid income and whether a family has health insurance. It is a query asking "how much" and trying to approve a hypothesis. These approaches will be extremely structured as well as steady during data collection procedure, most likely utilizing questionnaires with the closed-ended questions. The outcomes will give a numerical data that may be statistically examined when researchers seek correlations amid health insurance and income. Quantitative methods are best suited for this research question. The quantitative approach lets researchers to study the relationship amid health insurance and income. Data may be utilized to find cause and effect relations, so it can be utilized to make forecasts.
Aspers, P., & Corte, U. (2019). What is Qualitative in Qualitative Research. Qualitative Sociology.
Chesebro, J., &Borisoff, D. (2016). What Makes Qualitative Research Qualitative?. Qualitative Research Reports In Communication, 8(1), 3-14.
Larson-Hall, J., &Plonsky, L. (2015). Reporting and Interpreting Quantitative Research Findings: What Gets Reported and Recommendations for the Field. Language Learning, 65(S1), 127-159.
Malina, M., Nørreklit, H., &Selto, F. (2011). Lessons learned: advantages and disadvantages of mixed method research. Qualitative Research In Accounting & Management, 8(1), 59-71.
O'Byrne, P. (2007). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Mixing Methods: An Analysis of Combining Traditional and Autoethnographic Approaches. Qualitative Health Research, 17(10), pp.1381-1391.
Rahman, M. (2016). The Advantages and Disadvantages of Using Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches and Methods in Language “Testing and Assessment” Research: A Literature Review. Journal of Education and Learning, 6(1), p.102.
Savela, T. (2018). The advantages and disadvantages of quantitative methods in schoolscape research. Linguistics And Education, 44, 31-44.
Westerman, M. (2015). What counts as “good” quantitative research and what can we say about when to use quantitative and/or qualitative methods?. New Ideas In Psychology, 24(3), 263-274.
