What do qualitative and quantitative mean?
Qualitative research explores respondents’ opinions and feelings. Respondents are given freedom to provide their answers in their own words. An example of a qualitative question is “What do you enjoy most about working for XYZ Ltd?” Answers will vary from respondent to respondent, and are therefore more difficult to analyse. They also require more thought by the respondents and so are more time-consuming to answer. Quantitative research, as the name suggests, seeks information that can be quantified and counted. Typically, respondents will be asked to tick a box to indicate their response. Therefore the number of possible answers is limited to the number of tick-box choices, which means the data can be counted and statistically analysed. An example of a quantitative question, and tick-box choices, is “How long have you worked for XYZ Ltd? (a) Less than a year; (b) 1-3 years; (c) More than 3 years”.
