Quantitative Research

Quantitative research is almost always associated with the formal evaluation of numbers. That is, quantitative research is something that extends from the physical sciences to the social sciences and focuses on methods that follow certain prescribed rules for the gathering of, typically, numeric data. That said, it is important to understand that numbers by themselves have no meaning except the meaning that we establish in our theory. Quantitative research, then, focuses on research methods that allow researchers to say, with a certain degree of confidence, that something they systematically measured (via numbers) actually represents a larger number of people, or that something actually caused a change in something else.

The key to quantitative research is found in (1) measurement and (2) the collection of data in such a way that it can be reliably and validly interpreted when replicated by others. This, in turn, is found in the formal rules of quantitative research methods. These methods include survey research and experimental research, but arguments have been made to include content analysis as a formal, quantitative method. However, the majority of content-analytic studies focus on simple counts (Was a release picked up or not? Where or when was it reported?); thus, its use is more informal than formal. (It must be noted that thematic content analyses, which require a measurement item or scale for evaluation, may approach the formal nature of quantitative measurement.)

The key to any quantitative method is the gathering of data via some form of measurement. Measurement is the assigning of numbers to observations in a manner that has established validity and whose reliability can be assessed. All attempts at evaluating the attitudes, beliefs, or values of others requires the creation of some type of scale, a measure that focuses not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. Measurement scales attempt to identify how people will or have behaved, and why they behave in those ways. Once the data have been gathered, it is analyzed using statistical analysis. Because the responses to stimuli questions or experimental conditions are collected as numeric data, they are submitted to descriptive and/or inferential statistical analysis. This analysis collapses the individual responses to those of the group to which the individuals belong.

Quantitative research differs significantly from qualitative research in that quantitative research methods are not concerned with individual respondents per se. Users of quantitative research are more interested in how large numbers of subjects responded to stimuli. Thus, whereas qualitative methods provide rich data, quantitative methods provide normative data that can be parsed according to demographic or psychographic differences.

Part of quantitative research involves how data are collected. Because it is impossible to follow all members of a population around or ask them questions regarding their intentions to exhibit a behavior, quantitative research samples from a population in an effort to draw conclusions from the sampling. Public relations research often surveys respondents from some population to better understand how people feel or will behave. Some sampling techniques allow for conclusions that describe only those people who might have been available at the time of data collection. Other sampling techniques allow conclusions to be drawn about the larger population from which the sample was obtained. The former sampling techniques are called nonprobability (or convenience) sampling, whereas the latter are called probability sampling.

...