Discuss the following statement: "Quantitative research is more important than qualitative research because it results in statistical information and conclusive findings." Cook & Reichardt (1979) stated that the

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Q2. Discuss the following statement: "Quantitative research is more important than qualitative research because it results in statistical information and conclusive findings."

Cook & Reichardt (1979) stated that the functions of quantitative research are more important than qualitative research. However, this statement is not that suitable and reliable nowadays.

Quantitative research, as well as qualitative research, plays a significant role in today marketing research area. They enable researchers to analyze and evaluate people's behaviors and thinking for a particular topic. Most companies use this research methodology to get reliable and primary data. (Malhotra, 1999) "The distinction between qualitative and quantitative research are closely parallels the distinction between exploratory and conclusive research." (Malhotra, 1999, P.147) However, there are still many scholars argue about this topic for different reasons. In this report, it will bring up with arguments and analyses for both research methods, and a final conclusion will be made to evaluate which method is more trustful and reliable for a successful research.

"Qualitative research is an unstructured and exploratory research methodology based on small samples that provides insights and understanding of problem setting." (Malhotra, 1999, p.147). Besides, "Qualitative data are gathered primarily in the form of spoken or written language rather than in the form of numbers" (Polkinghorne, 2005, p.137). This type of research is to identify the social meaning and individuals' interaction in terms of gathering people feelings, views, attitudes, interests, motivations and beliefs. (Polkinghorne, 2005)

In other words, the researchers are more likely to get the results by understanding how people perform their human actions in society. For this reason, qualitative research is not only a useful tool for the identification of population study, but also more accurate than quantitative research (McDaniel & Gates, 2005). These examples can be found in the research topic of employees' satisfaction on hotel organisation, the researchers should focus with the personal working environment including all the facilities and offices in hotel, or follow the guideline from individuals' satisfaction based on their different beliefs and feelings. (Donovan & Fang, 2004) Nevertheless, the performance of qualitative research is merely focus on a small group of people (Cook & Reichardt, 1979).

According to Malhotra (1999), there are two different approaches in qualitative research of its implementation, which are direct and indirect approaches "A direct approach is not disguised. The purpose of the project is disclosed to the respondents or is otherwise obvious to them from the questions asked." (Malhotra, 1999, p.149) The excellent tools, including focus group discussion and depth interviews, are offered by the interviewers to collect data based on close relationship with respondents.

A group of people who exchanging their own opinion to each other is called focus group discussion, which is one of the ways to gather data (Wong, 1999). The implementation of focus group discussion can be found in the following case. The case content is about the health research. The performance is based on "a qualitative study exploring group dynamics and the moderator's positions in focus group discussions, in particular the interaction between the moderator's position and her role as a doctor" (Reventlow & Tulinius, 2005, p.335). The acquisitions of the research are influenced by the moderators' view, medical background and their situational response. It is also mentioned in the case that not only the group members are able to influence each other, but also the working environment can affect people's perceptions during discussion (Reventlow & Tulinius, 2005).

Although the focus group discussion is only use on a small group of people, they can create the questionnaires and talk anything in a group more freely on a particular subject whenever they want. It is because the structure of discussion is quite rapport and informal. Moreover, this kind of research can motivate respondents' performance by increasing their attention and encouraging everyone to express their opinion. Therefore, researchers are able to gain different ideas based on the informal discussion.

But there are some negative outcomes may also be raised. First of all, researchers cannot get statistical analysis and measurable data from the respondents. In addition, there should be a specific time and location to perform focus group discussion between all researchers and respondents. It may make the research becomes difficult and confuse to analyze the final results based on unstructured questionnaires. (Wong, 1999)
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Another function of qualitative research would be individual depth interview. "Depth interview is an unstructured, direct and personal interview in which a single respondent is probed by a highly skilled interviewer to uncover underlying motivations, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings on a topic" (Malhotra, 1999, p.157). Similar to focus group discussion, the depth interview relies on unstructured personal interview and questionnaires. The interviewers are freely to create questionnaires, and the respondents are able to talk based on their feelings and attitudes. During depth interview, those interviewers can directly influence the results of respondents by their interview skills and techniques. ...

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