Relevance of Quantitative Method in Sociological Research.

Relevance of quantitative method in sociological research.

Research methods in education (and the other social sciences) are often divided into two main types: quantitative and qualitative methods. This book will discuss one of these two main strands: ‘quantitative methods’, and what distinguishes quantitative from qualitative methods. When you think of quantitative methods, you will probably have specific things in mind. You will probably be thinking of statistics, numbers, and many of you may be feeling somewhat apprehensive because you think quantitative methods are difficult. Apart from the last one, all these thoughts capture some of the essence of quantitative methods. The following definition, taken from Aliaga and Gunderson (2000), describes what we mean by quantitative research methods very well: Quantitative research is ‘Explaining phenomena by collecting numerical data that are analysed using mathematically based methods (in particular

statistics)’. Let’s go through this definition step by step. The first element is explaining phenomena. This is a key element of all research, be it quantitative or qualitative. When we set out to do some research, we are always looking to explain something. In education, this could be questions like ‘why do teachers leave

teaching?’, ‘what factors influence pupil achievement?’, and so on. The specificity of quantitative research lies in the next part of the definition. In quantitative research, we collect numerical data. This is closely connected to the final part of the definition: analysis using mathematically based methods. In order to be able to use mathematically based methods, our data have to be in numerical form. This is not the case for qualitative research. Qualitative data are not necessarily or usually numerical, and therefore cannot be analysed by using statistics. Therefore, as quantitative research is essentially about collecting numerical

data to explain a particular phenomenon, particular questions...