Qualitative Versus Quantitative Analysis Essay

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Market researcher, there are a number of different research methods available. The first basic classification for research methods is the difference between qualitative and quantitative research. Quantitative research is based on numbers, while qualitative is not. This difference has implications in particular with respect to the way the data is analyzed, but there are also implications for how it is gathered as well. Examples of qualitative research methods are interviews, focus groups, surveys and reviews of primary source documents. Quantitative methods can also be done with surveys and interviews depending on the question, but also can reflect on market data such as sales and market share (ORAU.gov, 2016).

The reason market researchers use these different methodologies is that they are best used in different situations. For example, the techniques that are used in quantitative research are discrete and often are replicable. The downside to quantitative methods is that there is no real room for open-ended questioning, thus there are limits on the type of knowledge that a researcher can acquire. An example would be asking members of a focus group to rate their impressions of product on a scale of 1 to 10. This is quantitative research, and those numbers can be analyzed in a number of different ways. But those numbers do not answer the question of why the consumer feels a certain way.

With quantitative research, the data can usually be analyzed much more quickly, because quantitative data can be analyzed with relatively large sets (ORAU.

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gov, 2016). This is a disadvantage, conversely, with qualitative data. Qualitative data takes longer to interpret because there are no techniques for mass analysis of the different data points. The research must attempt to codify and analyze qualitative data manually. Furthermore, it is difficult to generalize these types of answers, and because of that it might be difficult to extrapolate them to a larger population (Sheragy, 2016).

However as discussed, as powerful as quantitative data is, it is not rich in the sense that it cannot express non-numeric concepts well. With qualitative data, there is more richness, more room for open-ended response. What this means is that while quantitative data can help a researcher to answer a specific question, qualitative data can answer more questions, and even open up new ones. There is a level of depth and detail possible that cannot be reached with quantitative data. There is even the ability for a researcher, in something like an interview, to introduce new questions, making some forms of qualitative research inherently more flexible (no….....

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