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NURB 361: Introduction to Nursing Research

For Suzi White's students

Quantitative Research

What is Quantitative Research?

  • Quantitative research is a way to learn about  a sample population (or a group of people chosen from the whole). Using scientific inquiry, quantitative research relies on observed or measured data to examine questions about this sample population.
  • This type of research focuses on numbers, and is thus precise.  
  • Uses statistics

Purpose?

  • Typically it is to determine the relationship between two variables. 

Sample Size

  • Usually large samples
  • Often simple random probability sampling 

Types of Data

  • Tests, surveys, frequently multiple-choice questionnaires 

 

F. Oguz, personal communication, May 22, 2019. 

Qualitative Research

What is Qualitative Research?

  • Uses interpretive techniques to describe, decode, and translate the meaning -- not the frequency -- of certain naturally occurring phenomena.
  • Uses non-statistical techniques
  • interested in how people interpret their experiences, how they construct their worlds, and what meaning they attribute to their experiences
  • Case studies tend to be qualitative

Purpose

  • To understand a phenomenon

Sample Size

  • small
  • purposeful sampling -- the investigator wants to discover, understand, and gain insight and therefore must select a sample from which the most can be learned. There is an emphasis on in-depth understanding of specific cases. 

Types of Data

  • Focus groups, interviews, field observation, historical comparison
  • mostly open-ended questions

 

F. Oguz, personal communication, June 10, 2019. 

Video

 

Unowacademics. (2014 May 19). UniversityNow:  Quantitative vs. qualitative research [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/bCuwX35MHyE