Some argue that quantitative methods are superior because they are value-free. What is implied here is that quantitative research reports reality. Qualitative research is influenced by the researchers political values. The argument being that such freedom in social science is either undesirable or impossible. A similar argument can arise about “flexibility”. Flexibility encourages qualitative researchers to be innovative. This is not a balanced argument because outside the social sciences quantitative research is favoured. For example Governments prefer quantitative research because it mimics the research of their own agencies. Qualitative research can complement any quantitative research a sociologist may have prepared or vice versa.
“Qualitative researchers still largely feel themselves to be second-class citizens whose work typically evokes suspicion, where the ‘gold standard’ is quantitative research.” (Silverman, 2000.)
To help explain why quantitative research is seen as the ‘gold standard’, I will describe the methods in more detail. There are five main methods of quantitative research. These are social survey, experiment, official statistics, “structured observation” and content analysis. A good example would be a survey of father and son’s occupations. The independent variable being the father’s occupation and the son’s being the dependant. This is because the father is the possible cause of the sons. The results of such a study would be shown in a table of findings. The survey could look at manual and non-manual workers, and random sample of 100 people would probably be used, depending on the researcher. This would be so the researcher could be confident within specifiable limits that any correlation is probably not a chance finding. Quantitative researchers do not like to change statements of correlation into casual statements. An example of another factor stopping them making these casual statements from the findings. A father and sons occupation may be associated with another variable, like inherited wealth. Quantitative researchers would not confidently state that a father’s occupation is significant cause of son’s occupation.
Qualitative researchers seek to correlate social and cultural construction. Whereas quantitative researchers neglect the issues that quantitative research seeks to correlate. I will outline some criticisms of quantitative research, highlighting the difference between the two schools of social research. “Variables” are used for statistical correlations, they may be naturally occurring, but are arbitrarily. Quantitative research is described by some as a “quick fix”, it involves very little or no contact with the ‘field’ or people. Overall quantitative research is taken into professions such as epidemiologists, they study official statistics about diseases, and secondly about criminologists are highly aware of the problems surrounding, what may get recorded as “cause of death” and suchlike.
Qualitative researchers do not like to make the assumption that quantitative techniques are the only way of displaying valid findings from qualitative research. A number of quantitative practices are seen as inappropriate by qualitative researchers. The idea that social science research can only be valid if based on experimental data, official statistics, random sampling. Those who criticize quantitative research, argue that these assumptions have a number of defects. They believe the techniques mentioned earlier like random sampling and experiments are sometimes inappropriate. They do not take into account behaviour in everyday situations for instance. Quantification can be useful but conceals basic social processes. A good example would be when counting attitudes in a survey. People do not always have coherent attitudes to the topic being researched. Another point is that we have adopted an attitude but behave differently in practice! Statistics simply cannot measure all areas of social reality.
Methods used by qualitative researchers are an example of the belief they can provide a “deeper” understanding of social phenomena than from quantitative data on its own! There is no agreed doctrine for qualitative research. There are many branches, these include feminism, postmodernism, and ethnomedology. There are some general preferences of qualitative researchers, which widen the difference between the two schools even more. They have a preference for qualitative data such as pictures and words to analyse, also for naturally occurring data to be used. Which means observing rather than conducting an experiment.
Many quantitative research books treat qualitative research as minor. Qualitative research suffers from lack of reliability. Silverman highlights this,
“referring to the degree of consistency with which instances are assigned to the same category by different observers or the same observer on different occasions.” (2000).
A second issue is how reliable the explanations offered are. This questions the validity of qualitative research. This is caused by a researcher failing to deal with contrary cases of evidence. Typical of qualitative research is interpretation, this plays a big part, as the researcher may be bias. Although there are some problems with reliability and validity, qualitative research probably does not deserve the downplay it receives.
In conclusion, quantitative and qualitative research methods are very different schools of research. On the surface it seems that quantitative research deals with simply numerical research, and qualitative research concerns the quality of research. Throughout this essay I have established this is not the case. Quantitative researchers seek to provide answers in a balanced scientific way, they do not make assumptions from their findings. Qualitative researchers aim to evaluate things as they stand, in an attempt to look at a lifelike picture, providing a “deeper” understanding. The fact that qualitative research is not a ‘hard science’ leaves it open to criticism from quantitative researchers. In my opinion neither school is superior. Both when carried out correctly provide good research.
