What exactly is qualitative and quantitative data?
The short answer: Quantitative=numerical variables; Qualitative=categorical variables. The long answer: Quantitative data is anything that is NUMERICAL in nature. Here we’re talking about how many, how frequently, or how much of something. For instance, “how many times the rat pressed the lever,” “how frequently a child hit another child,” or “how much implicit prejudice the participant showed.” Qualitative data is data that cannot be gathered numerically (how many, how frequently, how much), but is instead CATEGORICAL in nature. For qualitative data, we’re talking about *types* of behavior, rather than *number* of behaviors. For instance, what TYPE of career someone has, what parenting style someone has, and so on. To clarify… Let’s say you want to look at how education is related to career success. You can look at this in a few different ways: 1. QUANTITATIVELY: You can compare number of years of education (a numerical variable) with income at age 50 (also a numerical variable). Yo
