Question

Debate the advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative research based on your research experiences. Try to be objective as possible regarding both regardless of your preference.

Answer 1

Qualitative research- Observation, open ended questions are the techniques that comes under this type of research.

Advantages - It gives rich data about what we are studying. They are easy to understand , communicate to the participants and get data. One can predict the future from the data. The data can provide great insights, which may not be possible otherwise. It is a cheaper compared to the qualitative research.

Diasdvantage - The main disadvantage of this research type is interpreting the data. It can become subjective and time-consuming to get valuable information out of the data collected. This technique cannot be used for all the research topics. Reliability and validity of the data is questionable. Researchers should possess special skills to be unbiased and get relevant information from the subjects.

Quantitative research -The research seeks to get quantitative data such as percentage, statistics etc

Advantages - The data from the research is objective. It is easy to measure and there is good reliability and validity. Based on the data, one can make solid predictions.

Disadvantages - It can tell what is what and fails to provide deep insights into a topic. Non-numerical topics such as emotions, beliefs are unsuitable for this type of research. It would be expensive, as it requires conduction of research in large scale.