Understanding the differences between qualitative or quantitative methods is essential in the conduct of research in any industry. While both methods are widely used and sometimes the techniques of one can overlap the other, there are pronounced differences between qualitative and quantitative. The Qualitative method provides broad techniques in data gathering and can take longer in its research activities. But its research findings are usually subjective-they depend on the researcher’s observation, description, analysis and report of the outcomes. Whereas in the quantitative study, the research outcomes can be measured, tested and meet generalizability or a third-party validity test. To pass the validity and reliability test, a researcher must learn to think critically and avoid the use of common pitfalls in human reasoning. Although qualitative and quantitative research methodologies have a lot in common, and sometimes their functions overlap and complement each other, they are different in many ways. This article attempts to compare qualitative and quantitative research methodologies. To do so requires organizing the paper into parts as follows: Part I introduces the article, and Part II defines the terms qualitative and quantitative. Part II shows a comparison between the two words and part IV is the conclusion followed by a list of essential annotated bibliographies
Check back for the full article
