Two major kinds of research exist, quantitative and qualitative research. Each kind of research method has its context of best utility and it may sometimes be necessary to combine aspects of both, depending on the research topic and field. Interviews and observation are two common types of data collection methods used in quantitative research. Interviews involve verbal administration of questions to respondents, and may be structured, semi-structured or unstructured depending on the questions’ level of specificity and universality among respondents. Observation involves taking time to watch the research subjects over a time period or within a certain set of circumstances.
Advantages of observation, semi-structured and unstructured interviews include the possibility of high data depth and their suitability in covering subjects which have barely been researched on before and therefore little is known about them. The two methods are also suitable when seeking a new perspective on a subject. The disadvantages of these quantitative methods include the large volume of varied data which is often difficult to analyze, and the large amount of time often consumed in data collection and analysis. Data from observation data can be analyzed through trend analysis where observed traits and characteristics are analyzed based on data from past research. Data from semi-structured or unstructured interviews can be analyzed through thematic analysis where prevalent themes are identified.
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Two research questions for a quantitative research study could be:
What is the effectiveness of mobile applications for fitness purposes?
An inferential statistic suitable herein would be a hypothesis test that allows for the sample to be evaluated for its validity as a representation of the entire population.
What is the importance of weight on the effectiveness of football players in high school?
This question would require for a mean weight to be estimated from a sample. A suitable inferential statistic would be confidence intervals (CI) given the difficulty of obtaining an actual mean weight representative of the whole population from a sample.
References
Bergin, T. (2018). An introduction to data analysis: Quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods .
Oflazoglu, S. (2017). Qualitative versus quantitative research .
