Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative Research Methods in Social Sciences

HEALTH AND
SOCIAL CARE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................3
PART 1 SECTION 1.......................................................................................................................3
Theoretical approaches for Qualitative Research........................................................................3
PART 1 SECTION 2.......................................................................................................................4
What types of methodologies are commonly used in quantitative research? Why? ...................4
What types of methodologies are commonly used in qualitative research? Why? .....................4
Why do sample sizes differ between quantitative and qualitative research methodologies? .....5
PART 2 ...........................................................................................................................................5
Explanation of key arguments of quantitative articles ................................................................5
Explanation of Key arguments of qualitative articles..................................................................6
Comparison of data collection methods ......................................................................................6
Explanation of reason for selection of data collection methods .................................................7
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES ...............................................................................................................................9
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INTRODUCTION
The purpose of the present essay is to differentiate between quantitative and qualitative
research methods that are adopted for conducting studies in social sciences. Research methods
comprise of procedures that are utilized for data gathering and its analysis. These includes
experiments, interviews, surveys and observations. Social science constitutes the branch of
sciences that studies relationships that exist among individuals as well as within the societies. It
also deals with the study of social and cultural aspects of human behavior (Reiter, 2017). The
present essay will be divided into two parts. In the first part, section 1 will describe the
theoretical ideas of different approaches. The key differences between quantitative and
qualitative research will be described in the next section. Following it, part 2 will be based on 2
qualitative articles and 2 quantitative articles. Key arguments of the articles will be explained
followed by comparison of their data collection methods.
Qualitative research is defined as a research that lays emphasis on applying humanistic
and idealistic approaches for analyzing a research query. Quantitative research, in contrast to this
is defined as gathering quantifiable data and conducting its systematic investigation through use
of computational, mathematical and statistical techniques (Sovacool, Axsen and Sorrell, 2018).
Positivism research philosophy focuses on considering that there is an objective way to
understand the social world. Interpretivism research philosophy emphasizes on the principle that
a special role is played by the researcher while making observation of the social world. It further
depends on the interests of the researcher.
PART 1 SECTION 1
Theoretical approaches for Qualitative Research
Qualitative approach refer to the process in which the human belief and the word report
of the research. It represents the education, sociology, health science etc. there are 4 type of
approaches used in the qualitative research in theoretical approach, here are the following:
Ethnography: It represents the data of the theoretical by the geographical location but it has it
include virtual group or organizational. It is a great method and having a practitioner method.
The most common way of this method of theoretical is participation observation.
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