Quantitative Research

Within the social sciences, quantitative research is frequently considered to be a systematic method in which observable data are collected and analyzed numerically. The focus is on the application of appropriate mathematical and statistical techniques to examine the relationship between variables of interest and hypothesis testing. Some researchers differentiate between qualitative and quantitative research methods and data collection, such as surveys being associated with quantitative research and ethnographies with qualitative research. While this is often accurate, the greatest distinction between the two is sampling and generalizability of findings. For quantitative research, the findings must be generalizable from a specific sample to a greater population. This often involves large random sampling. Both quantitative and qualitative methods, along with the often-overlooked experimental methods, are necessary for the ...