A BRIEF COMPARISON OF QUALITATIVE AND

QUANTITATIVE METHODS

(From Upcraft and Schuh, Assessment in Student Affairs, 1996)

Qualitative Quantitative

Key Concept

Meaning Statistical Relationships

Design

Emerging, Flexible Structured, predetermined

Data

Field notes, people’s own words, Measures, counts, numbers

documents, behavior

Sampling

Non-representative, small Large, stratified, random

Methods

Observations, reviewing documents, Experiments, survey instruments,

Data sets

Interviewing

Relationships with subjects

Personal contacts, emphasis on trust Short term, distant

Instruments

Researcher, tape recorder, cameras Inventories, questionnaires, computer

Data Analysis

Ongoing, inductive Deductive, statistical

Advantages

Flexibility, emphasis on understanding Ease of use, high acceptance

Disadvantages

Time, hard to reduce data, hard to study Controlling other variables,

large groups, hard to explain anomalies oversimplifying