Advantages And Disadvantages Of Quantitative And Qualitative Methods Psychology Essay

Advantages And Disadvantages Of Quantitative And Qualitative Methods Psychology Essay The idea is that you analyse quantitative methods in general, noting the disadvantages and advantages of quantitative research and to illustrate your points you then use examples such as surveys, or structured interviews, or quantitative content analysis. Then you do the same with qualitative methods. And either after or somewhere between this you compare the advantages adn disadvantages. Despite the apparent distinctions between Quantitative and Qualitative research, they both complement each other. But the important question for any researcher is which research methodology to use and what is relevant to my particular study. According to Dawson, C (2002), who’s book is a step to step guide of mastering research, states that it fundamental to decided what research technique to use, â€Å"Don’t fall into the trap which many beginning (and experienced) researchers do in thinking that quantitative research is ‘better’ than qualitative research. Neither is be tter than the other- they are just different and both have strengths and weaknesses.† When I think of qualitative research I think of subjective form of research, based on someone’s own point of view. A good definition I picked out is â€Å"Usually emphasizes quantification in the collection and analysis of data.† Example of the use this type of research would be in the recent elections, have a up-to date polling survey, measuring the success of election candidates, http://www.ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/. Secondly Quantitative research projects often include larger numbers of respondents, and covers a larger geographical area. Therefore can give and indication of views of a larger population, rather than minority opinions. This therefore enhances the generalisation of the results. For example surveys, a quantitative research â€Å"in which researcher systematically asks a large amount of people the same questions and then records their answers.† A closed q uestionnaire was conducted to people in Britain, asking whether they are going to vote in the general election and for which party. This data was transferred into stats which were compared between different cities and counties, and opinions for different areas were compared. This is very useful as it gives a overall picture and understanding of what research concludes making it easy to draw comparisons, project trends and recognize differences among communities and groups. An example used was in Mcqueen, R and Knussen (2002) p28, Box2.1, comparing the two types research view points, on the same scenario. When looking that the results made by the quantitative researcher, it is a complete mystery on what the numbers are trying to represent and the results only make small conclusions. However looking at the Qualitative researchers result, there is a much deeper understanding, by me the reader, to what he is discussing, clearly seeing his conclusion, and I have gained a broader understa nding of this research topic. This is bad because the researcher can be enticed to manipulate the participant’s answers to suit the research. The normal questions researcher employs, can lead to biasness and false depiction of the data, which reflects the view of the researcher, than the participant. In essence quantitative research method can encourage the researcher could influence the subject’s answers to go with the research.