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Reviewing the Scholarly Literature and Planning a Study - Qualitative and quantitative research orientations

4 important questions on Reviewing the Scholarly Literature and Planning a Study - Qualitative and quantitative research orientations

What is the nature of the data and how might they differ?

Soft data, in the form of impressions, words, sentences, photos,
symbols, and so forth common in qualitative studies, dictate different research strategies and data collection techniques than hard data, in the form of numbers used in quantitative studies.

What are the orientations of the two approaches?

Qualitative researchers tend to rely on interpretive or critical social science, follow a nonlinear research path, and speak a language of “cases and contexts.” They emphasize conducting detailed examinations of cases that arise in the natural flow of social life.

Most quantitative researchers rely on a positivist approach to social science. They follow a linear research path, speak a language of “variables and hypotheses,” and emphasize precisely measuring variables and testing hypotheses that are linked to general causal explanations.