From the course: SPSS for Academic Research

Unlock the full course today

Join today to access over 22,400 courses taught by industry experts or purchase this course individually.

Quantitative vs. qualitative

Quantitative vs. qualitative - SPSS Statistics Tutorial

From the course: SPSS for Academic Research

Start my 1-month free trial

Quantitative vs. qualitative

- [Instructor] There are two basic categories of research, quantitative and qualitative. And I think it's worth briefly talking about the difference between the two, even though we'll be focusing on quantitative research in this particular course. Quantitative research is concerned with facts and numbers. It's a very objective style of research that assumes a fixed reality that can be measured. You often hear people use the phrase cold, hard facts. That's what I most often associate with measurable, quantitative work. Data are generally collected through measurement and analyzed through statistical inferences. If you look through quantitative studies, you'll notice that a lot of the data findings are reported in statistical terms. P values, confidence intervals, hypotheses, things of that nature. The US census is a great example of large-scale quantitative research in action. Census-takers survey households and then use the data to help objectively determine in which districts to…

Contents