Numbers with Heart and Soul

(Quantitative and Qualitative Research)

By Geozita Haygood-Fitch

A forum post for the course EDDE 206, for my Masters in Distance Education

“Not all that can be counted, counts. And not all that counts can be counted. “ --Albert
Einstein.

This saying by the genius tells us the importance of both quantitative and qualitative
components of research.

My experience in research goes way back in college. Being a social science major, in
Sociology that is, there was a lot of paper to do. But I was not very keen about the
quantitative part because it involved numbers and symbols in which I am not very good
at. Besides, I didn’t understand or appreciate how you can quantify results or how you
can put numerical values on things, or how one can be so exact about things that you
cannot possibly touch, hear or see with such numerical precision. And I had an
abhorrence of being “just a statistic.” And I dreaded the Thesis part of graduation.
Luckily, there was a project of Prof. Zarco on the Socio-Biological Impact of Tourism in
Puerto Galera.” And the Research class was tagged as the researchers and the output
was going to be a group thesis. So, we all had assignments and Statistics wasn’t mine.

What I enjoyed as a research exercise was our project on the then popular Smokey
Mountain. We didn’t do any survey. My group mates and me just interviewed people
from the community and became participants and observant by spending a day and a
night with a family’s shanty.

In all the researches that I did, in school and at work, there is one thing I observed, and
that is, that research is a creative process. As a researcher I begin with what I know
from current knowledge, from research materials, or gathered from lectures. Then as
the work progresses, I find out that there are things I missed, more questions I’d like to
ask, more data I’d like to gather, until I come to exhaustion and then be grateful that
there is such a thing as a “Delimitations of the Study.” Maybe it’s in the fiery hunger or
burning passion for knowledge in me, that is why I tend to go beyond or I want to extend
as much as I can.

One sure thing I know is this: As a creative endeavor, a research work comes with
inspiration. You want to study something because the study is meaningful to you. There
is something about the study that is near and dear to you. That there is something you
can do with it, for your sake and for others. But as much as one is inspired internally,
external inspiration also counts. Learning and research need to be nurtured by a
supportive family of the researcher. Otherwise, frustration may arise.

I encountered frustrations in my research, too. There are expectations that are unmet,
like the cooperation of intended respondents. I ended up dropping one variable because
I couldn’t get 2 subjects to participate. When a variable is absent you cannot complete
your research and you end up putting in your conclusions and recommendations that
this variable need to be considered in another study.

As to my preference for Qualitative study, I relate to Albert Einstein who said: As far as
the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are
certain, they do not refer to reality.

My bias for qualitative research surfaced when I saw the computations of the weighted
mean. A 3 is a neutral, 4 is agree and 5 is strongly agree. How do you describe 3.5?
neutral but agrees sometimes, sometimes neutral but almost always agrees? And then
u follow the rule, 3.5 becomes a 4. How so? The question redounds to a why. Why cant
it be an exact 4 or 3 or just 5. And so we resort to “qualifying the response. There’s your
validation issue. What lies behind the numbers? When a respondent says neutral, why
so? She cant agree but wont disagree either. Is that a shrug? Is that a smirk? Do you
see a slant of the eyebrow?

Now I know why statisticians are paid fairly high. It’s not fun making tables and doing
computations. And well, I also learned that you cannot get away from something you
need to know. In my case, statistics.

I appreciate the value of statistics. And even if I have numerophobia, I dont have to do
calculations anyway. That's what statisticians are there for and I will just do the analysis.
(Im being honest here). I know that if I have to do a research study to implement
concrete changes, then I must be able to present quantifiable measures. But I will
always hold that without a qualitative study, the numbers will mean nothing because
they do not reveal the heart and soul of the responses behind the figures.