Analyzing Research Designs: Qualitative vs. Quantitative Approaches

This report delves into the comparison of qualitative and quantitative research designs, highlighting their similarities and differences within the context of nursing research. It begins by defining both research designs, emphasizing that both enhance knowledge and skill in specific research topics and increase the accuracy of results. The report further discusses that both designs evaluate literature reviews, and help researchers develop hypotheses. The core difference lies in their approaches: qualitative research explores "why" through subjective methods like interviews and observations, while quantitative research focuses on "what" using objective, numerical data from surveys and statistical analysis. Examples are provided to illustrate these differences, such as using individual interviews to understand the factors leading to depression (qualitative) versus online surveys to calculate disease prevalence rates (quantitative). The report references several academic sources to support its claims, providing a comprehensive overview of the subject matter.

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Research is considered as the most extensively used tool that assist the researchers in
increasing their knowledge and gather more relevant information on any specific research
topic. There are two major types of research design that is mostly used and followed by
different group of researcher belonging to different domain namely qualitative research
design and quantitative research design (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). This study will focus
on highlighting the similarity and difference among the two research designs that as has a
massive effect on the existing and future development of improving the general practice and
research strategy.
The similarity among the qualitative and quantitative research design is that using any
of the above research design, the researcher can enhance their knowledge and skill on the
specific topic and also increase the accuracy of their result. Both qualitative and quantitative
research design evaluates the literature review that will provide the researcher with a prior
knowledge and understanding of their choice of topic. The research design permits the
researcher to develop hypothesis or idea regarding their research and understand the topic in
detail. The qualitative research design deal with the concept of “why” and quantitative
research design deal with the concept of “what”, therefore the major similarity between the
two research designs is that the researchers can use both the methods to generate their result
that is un-biased and highly accurate (Brannen, 2017).
Following the similarity, there are some crucial difference between the qualitative and
quantitative research design. Qualitative research design is defined as the process of
investigation that enhances understanding on social and human science and evaluate the way
in which people feel and think. Whereas, Quantitative research design is defined as the
process of investigation that is primarily used to create hard facts and numerical data, by
using mathematical, logical and statistical technique. The approach of using qualitative

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method is subjective in nature, while on the other hand, the approach of using quantitative
method is objective in nature (Antwi & Hamza, 2015).
Qualitative method helps the researcher to generate an idea or hypothesis for
conducting the quantitative method and follow techniques like semi-structured or
unstructured technique. The example of qualitative research method comprise of individual
interview, observation and group discussion, where the sample size is usually small. For
example, conducting an individual interview for determining the factors leading towards
depression, as individual interview will help the researcher to understand the feeling and idea
of the individual person and highlight the concept of “why” (Hartas, 2015). Quantitative
research method utilises measurable statistics to articulate facts and reveal the research
pattern.
Quantitative method is considered as a more structured data collection method when
compared to qualitative method. The example of quantitative method includes different types
of surveys such as paper survey, online survey, systematic observation, mobile survey and
kiosk survey. For example, if the researcher has to gather the prevalence rate of any disease
condition and calculate the mortality rate as a part of their research, they need to follow the
online or paper survey, where they can extract the exact data regarding the disease in a
specific region, therefore, decreasing any risk of biasness and highlight the concept of “what”
(McCusker & Gunaydin 2015).

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References
Antwi, S. K., & Hamza, K. (2015). Qualitative and quantitative research paradigms in
business research: A philosophical reflection. European Journal of Business and
Management, 7(3), 217-225.
Bell, E., Bryman, A., & Harley, B. (2018). Business research methods. Oxford university
press.
Brannen, J. (2017). Combining qualitative and quantitative approaches: an overview. In
Mixing methods: Qualitative and quantitative research (pp. 3-37). Routledge.
Hartas, D. (Ed.). (2015). Educational research and inquiry: Qualitative and quantitative
approaches. Bloomsbury Publishing.
McCusker, K., & Gunaydin, S. (2015). Research using qualitative, quantitative or mixed
methods and choice based on the research. Perfusion, 30(7), 537-542