Research Guides: KINS 2205: Research Methods in Kinesiology: Qualitative or Quantitative?

Qualitative vs Quantitative

Qualitative research is usually exploratory research, used to gain an understanding of underlying reasons, opinions, and motivations; or qualities. Qualitative data describes qualities or characteristics.

Quantitative research is used to evaluate or quantify a problem and its defined variables. Quantitative data can be counted, compared, and transformed into statistics.

	Qualitative Research	Quantitative Research
Objective	Understand trends or provide insight into a problem, gain an understanding of underlying reasons or motivations	Measure the incidence of a problem in a chosen sample, quantify data and generalize results from a sample
Sample	A small number of non-representative cases, often chosen	A large number of subjects randomly selected
Data	Data tells a story, non-statistical, anecdotal	Statistical, data expressed as a number
Metric	Temperature: "cold"	Temperature: degrees celsius
Question	Exploratory such as how or why	Conclusive such as when, where, or what

Identifying Qualitative Research Example

This abstract has several indications that this is a qualitative study:

the goal of the study was to explore the subject's experiences
the data was collected with an open-ended survey
the researchers used thematic analysis

Identifying Quantitative Research Example

This abstract has several indications that this is a quantitative study:

the goal of the study was examining the relationship between two variables
the subjects completed questionnaires
the researchers express their findings as percentages and refer to the participant group as a sample