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Qualitative and quantitative research are debated in the social sciences. Quantitative research collects numerical data and is less biased, while qualitative research is more subjective and produces stories and descriptions. The debate continues on which approach is better for fields such as sociology and psychology.
Qualitative and quantitative research are the two main schools of research, and while they are often used in tandem, the advantages and disadvantages of each are hotly debated. Particularly in the social sciences, the merits of both qualitative and quantitative research are disputed, with intense opinion on both sides of the argument. It is generally accepted, however, that there are certain phases of research where one or the other is clearly more useful than the other, and so few people are completely ignorant of one or the other.
Quantitative research is probably the less controversial of the two schools, as it is more closely aligned with what is seen as the classical scientific paradigm. Quantitative research involves collecting absolute data, such as numerical data, so that it can be examined as unbiased as possible. There are many principles that go hand in hand with quantitative research, which help promote its supposed neutrality. Quantitative research generally comes later in a research project, once the scope of the project has been well understood.
The main idea behind quantitative research is to be able to easily separate things so that they can be counted and statistically modeled, to remove factors that can distract from the research intent. A researcher typically has a very clear idea of what is being measured before they start measuring it, and their study is set up with controls and a very clear design. The tools used are intended to minimize any bias, so ideally they are information-gathering machines and less ideally they would be carefully randomized surveys. The result of quantitative research is a collection of numbers, which can be subjected to statistical analysis to arrive at the results.
Remaining emotionally separate from the research is a key aspect of quantitative research, as is removing researcher bias. For things like astronomy or other hard sciences, this means that quantitative research has a minimal amount of bias. For things like sociological data, this means that most bias is hopefully limited to that introduced by the people being studied, which can somehow be explained in models. Quantitative is ideal for testing hypotheses and for complex sciences seeking to answer specific questions.
Qualitative research, on the other hand, is a much more subjective form of research, where the researcher allows itself to introduce its own bias to help form a more complete picture. Qualitative research may be necessary in situations where it is not clear what exactly one is looking for in a study, so the researcher should be able to determine which data are important and which are not. While quantitative research generally knows exactly what it is looking for before the research begins, in qualitative research the focus of the study may become more apparent over time.
Often the data presented by qualitative research will be much less concrete than pure numbers as data. Instead, qualitative research can produce stories, pictures, or descriptions of feelings and emotions. The interpretations provided by research subjects carry weight in qualitative research, so no attempt is made to limit their bias. At the same time, researchers tend to be more emotionally attached to qualitative research, and thus their biases may also play a large role in the results.
Within the social sciences, there are two opposing schools of thought. It is argued that fields such as sociology and psychology should try to be as rigorous and quantitative as possible, to produce results that are more easily generalizable and to sustain respect from the scientific community. Another argues that these fields benefit from qualitative research, as it allows for a richer study of a topic and allows for the gleaning of information that would otherwise be completely lost by a quantitative approach. Although attempts have been made in recent years to find a stronger synthesis between the two, the debate rages on, with many social scientists falling sharply to one side or the other.
