Qualitative vs. Quantitative
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What is the difference between quantitative and qualitative strategies of inquiry?
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The expert examines qualitative versus quantitative strategies of inquiry.
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Qualitative data is derived from the idiographic scientific approach. This approach is more often used in the field of sociology and anthropology, and it often results in data obtained from "natural" settings. The case method, interview, observation, and retrieval of Archival research are the methods used to gather qualitative data.
In the field of psychology, scientific researchers use the nomothetic approach to study groups of people in an experimentally controlled way. They are more apt to use large scale (rather than individual) studies via survey questionnaires to gather their quantitative data, and to compare differences and similarities between groups of people. Quantitative data results in numerical, statistical data that can provide a measure of association and causes between variables in a precise, mathematical way. Qualitative data, on the other hand, produces verbal summaries of research findings, with no numerical or statistical summaries that can be mathematical compared.
Seeing as that reliability and validity are represented in quantitative data as numerical figures, how can they apply to qualitative data in which there are no numerical figures to work with? This makes it hard if ...
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