Research Tips

Quantitative versus Qualitative Research

Quantitative and qualitative research each have staunch advocates and vocal critics, but we suggest viewing them as complementary rather than competing techniques since each approach has strengths and weaknesses.

Qualitative techniques generally allow issues to be explored in more depth and provide greater potential for discovering the unexpected, yet they do not generate the rigorous statistical results that quantitative techniques can and therefore there is often greater uncertainty about whether the results will generalize (to other customers, other situations, etc.).
Quantitative techniques can often provide definitive answers to “Who?”, “What?”, “When?”, and “Where?” questions, but often they do not provide as comprehensive explanations to “Why?” and “How?” questions as qualitative techniques do.

Using both quantitative and qualitative methods is a good way to attain the advantages inherent in each approach while offsetting the weaknesses. By combining techniques, you’ll get more information and have greater confidence in it.