Quantitative vs. Qualitative Research

Reading Summary

Quantitative research tends to be “systematic, precise and accurate” as it tries to determine validity, reliability, objectivity and truth of certain variables. It attempts to isolate and analyze the relationship between different variables using numbers and numerical correlations. Quantitative is sometimes favored over Qualitative as numbers tend to be more reliable. Qualitative traits include being “interdisciplinary, interpretive, political and theoretical in nature”. It attempts to create a sense of the larger ideas of human relationships. Qualitative research is not “objective data to be quantified, but meaningful relations to be interpreted”. Qualitative researchers consider the diversity of meanings and values created in media. They focus more on the relationships that exist within the media and society. Choosing which method is based on the questions researchers wish to ask. In the media, qualitative research looks to understand and develop meaning behind traditions, contexts, usages and meanings of words, concepts and ideas. Language is the basis of any human interaction and it is through the idea of language that the meanings of our social realities are constructed. Language does significantly more than just describe our lives, it helps to create social realities. Rather than just analyzing the language used in a text or the accuracy of that language, qualitative researchers look at the social practices, representations, assumptions and stories about our lives that are revealed in such texts.

Outside Example

The movie, “A Thousand Words” is a film about a literary agent who is not afraid to stretch the truth to get various book deals. One night, he discovers a tree in his backyard and for every word that he speaks, a leaf will fall off of the tree. When the tree runs out of leaves, the tree will perish, as will he. He gets told that he has to fix his relationships in order to be able to speak freely again and lift the curse of the tree, so he goes and fixes all relationships that have been screwed up in his life, and as soon as he fixes his last one, the curse is lifted and he is able to speak freely again.

Reading Connection

“A Thousand Words” relates back to the idea that language is the basis of any human interaction. The power of words is extremely important in qualitative research and textual analysis. Qualitative research is based off words and the meanings behind them and it’s not as simple as quantitative research where numbers don’t lie. In the movie, the main character lies to gets what he wants and that eventually comes back to screw him over and he ends up having to limit his language to what really matters. Quantitative researchers have to believe that people will tell the truth in order to get accurate data and under the assumption that most people lie to get what they want, quantitative research can sometimes not be very reliable. Without language, quantitative research also would not be available, nothing really would be available as there would be no civilization without language. Humans have adapted language in a way to manipulate others and use it as a bargaining chip, and in scientific research, it can be hard to distinguish between manipulative words and the truth.