Quantitative and Qulitative Methods

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The comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of the quantitative and qualitative research methods | | Candidate Number: 626309 | Introduction: Quantitative and qualitative approaches are the two mainly used research methods in the social sciences. To compare and contrast these two methods and understand their differences and relations as well as the advantages and disadvantages, tends to have a significant meaning to further develop the skill in terms of understanding theories behind the data and transfer the data into useful information to direct our behaviours. There is a group of people argue that the reason caused the theory hard to be used in the real situation is the lack of preciseness as well as scientificity. In other words, the theory is too abstract to be followed in the reality. However, by contrast, some people believe that the most effective way to understanding nature of this world is not through scientific approaches but epistemology and philosophy (Yang 2005). Indeed, according to the previous experience of humans, the best way to explain a phenomenon is to use both of the quantitative and qualitative methods, none of them can be effectively used in the complex research without the other one. In this essay, with the general analysis of quantitative method and an example of structured interview, some advantages and disadvantages of quantitative method will be discussed initially. The second section will then point out two methods of qualitative research, participant observation and qualitative interview, followed by the discussion of whether they are good or bad applications under different situations. And finally conclude with the comparison between the advantages and disadvantages of quantitative and qualitative research approaches. Quantitative research method: Some of the phenomena we observe can be quantitative since

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