Quantitative methods

Quantitative methods are research techniques that are used to gather quantitative data -
information dealing with numbers and anything that is measurable. Statistics,tables and
graphs, are often used to present the results of these methods..

Examples of quantitative research

• Research that consists of the percentage amounts of all the elements that make up
Earth's atmosphere.
• Survey that concludes that the average patient has to wait two hours in the waiting
room of a certain doctor before being selected.
• An experiment in which group x was given two tablets of Aspirin a day and
Group y was given two tablets of a placebo a day where each participant is
randomly assigned to one or other of the groups.

The numerical factors such as two tablets, percent of elements and the time of waiting
make the situations and results quantitative.

Qualitative research is a method of inquiry appropriated in many different academic

disciplines, traditionally in the social sciences,, but also in market research and further
contexts. Qualitative researchers aim to gather an in-depth understanding of human
behavior and the reasons that govern such behavior. The qualitative method investigates
the why and how of decision making, not just what, where, when. Hence, smaller but
focused samples are more often needed, rather than large samples.

Contents
• 1 History
• 2 Distinctions from quantitative research
• 3 Data Collection
• 4 Data analysis
• 5 Paradigmatic differences
• 6 Validation
• 7 Academic research
• 8 See also
• 9 Notes
• 10 References

The Different between Quantitative and Qualitative

Quantitative research is research which collects measurements that can be analyzed

mathematically. Generally speaking, this means data which has (or can be interpreted as
having) an interval or ratio scale of measurement. Quantitative research can produce
statistical results that are powerful - meaning that they can make very fine distinctions
between tested groups - but sometimes suffer from over-specificity, producing results
which (however accurate) are trivial, or difficult to interpret in meaningful terms.

Qualitative research takes measurements that are difficult to analyze mathematically.

Statistical techniques for qualitative research are far less powerful than quantitative
techniques, but qualitative data usually contains much more information, and is often
easier to interpret and more meaningful to real-world situations than quantitative results.

Dependent Variable:

A dependent variable is what you measure in the experiment and what is affected during
the experiment. The dependent variable responds to the independent variable. It is called
dependent because it "depends" on the independent variable. In a scientific experiment,
you cannot have a dependent variable without an independent variable.

Example: You are interested in how stress affects heart rate in humans. Your independent
variable would be the stress and the dependent variable would be the heart rate. You can
directly manipulate stress levels in your human subjects and measure how those stress
levels change heart rate.

An independent variable is that variable which is presumed to affect or determine a

dependent variable. It can be changed as required, and its values do not represent a
problem requiring explanation in an analysis, but are taken simply as given