Quantitative research (the word ‘quantitative’ comes from the word ‘quantity’) involves information or data in the form of numbers. This allows us to measure or to quantify a whole range of things. For example: the number of people who live below the poverty line; the number of children between specific ages who attend school; the average spending power in a community; or the number of adults who have access to computers in a village or town.
A common way of conducting quantitative research is using a survey. Surveys usually involve filling in a questionnaire. The usefulness of a survey is that the information you get is standardized because each respondent – the person who fills out the questionnaire – is answering the exact same questions. Once you have enough responses to your questionnaire, you can then put the data together and analyse it in a way that answers your research question – or what it is you want to know.
It is important to realize that quantitative research does not necessarily mean that respondents will give numbers for their answers to your questions. Sometimes they may answer a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, as in: ’Do you have a computer?’ Sometimes they might write down an answer, a word, a sentence, or a paragraph to describe something, as in answers to: ’What is the brand or make of your computer?’ and ’Please describe in detail what you use your computer for.’ Other answers may involve numbers, as in: ’How many computers do you have in your business or organization?’
How these varied responses become numbers is in the way they are analysed. From the example questions above, one might be able to say: 20 out of the 30 (66%) respondents use a particular brand of computer, while 5 (16%) use another. The remaining five respondents all used different brands of computers which you would list. You might then want to provide some examples of how the computers are used.
There are, of course, many different kinds of quantitative research besides the survey. Observational research involves watching or observing various behaviours and patterns. Perhaps you want to find out how many cars of a particular make use a specific intersection.To do this you might stand at the intersection at a particular time of day, and record the makes of cars. Perhaps you want to monitor the number of people entering a particular shop at specific times of the day, recording their behaviours, and whether or not they buy anything or are just browsing.
More complicated forms of quantitative research are experimental research or mathematical modelling research. (See the glossary for their definitions.)
Media research may use a form of quantitative research to understand the number of articles published in a range of newspapers on a particular topic. These articles are then analysed according to various monitoring criteria, such as the specific focus of the article, the author, the date of publication, page number, the column length and even the headline. From this, you can make analyses such as: ’Of all the commercial newspapers in Nigeria, 25% of them carried stories on HIV/AIDS during January and February 2004.’ You may want to add that most of these were written by five journalists, or that none of them appeared on the front page of the newspaper during this period.
With all kinds of research, it is important to be as specific as possible, and to explain your assumptions. Remember, your research results might not tell you everything but they will be valuable for what they do reveal. In the example of the media research, we might be able to conclude that HIV/AIDS didn’t feature prominently in the commercial media during the monitored period. We might want to find out the reasons for this and decide to interview the newspaper editors. By doing this, we would be doing some qualitative research.
A common way of conducting quantitative research is using a survey. Surveys usually involve filling in a questionnaire. The usefulness of a survey is that the information you get is standardized because each respondent – the person who fills out the questionnaire – is answering the exact same questions. Once you have enough responses to your questionnaire, you can then put the data together and analyse it in a way that answers your research question – or what it is you want to know.
It is important to realize that quantitative research does not necessarily mean that respondents will give numbers for their answers to your questions. Sometimes they may answer a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, as in: ’Do you have a computer?’ Sometimes they might write down an answer, a word, a sentence, or a paragraph to describe something, as in answers to: ’What is the brand or make of your computer?’ and ’Please describe in detail what you use your computer for.’ Other answers may involve numbers, as in: ’How many computers do you have in your business or organization?’
How these varied responses become numbers is in the way they are analysed. From the example questions above, one might be able to say: 20 out of the 30 (66%) respondents use a particular brand of computer, while 5 (16%) use another. The remaining five respondents all used different brands of computers which you would list. You might then want to provide some examples of how the computers are used.
There are, of course, many different kinds of quantitative research besides the survey. Observational research involves watching or observing various behaviours and patterns. Perhaps you want to find out how many cars of a particular make use a specific intersection.To do this you might stand at the intersection at a particular time of day, and record the makes of cars. Perhaps you want to monitor the number of people entering a particular shop at specific times of the day, recording their behaviours, and whether or not they buy anything or are just browsing.
More complicated forms of quantitative research are experimental research or mathematical modelling research. (See the glossary for their definitions.)
Media research may use a form of quantitative research to understand the number of articles published in a range of newspapers on a particular topic. These articles are then analysed according to various monitoring criteria, such as the specific focus of the article, the author, the date of publication, page number, the column length and even the headline. From this, you can make analyses such as: ’Of all the commercial newspapers in Nigeria, 25% of them carried stories on HIV/AIDS during January and February 2004.’ You may want to add that most of these were written by five journalists, or that none of them appeared on the front page of the newspaper during this period.
With all kinds of research, it is important to be as specific as possible, and to explain your assumptions. Remember, your research results might not tell you everything but they will be valuable for what they do reveal. In the example of the media research, we might be able to conclude that HIV/AIDS didn’t feature prominently in the commercial media during the monitored period. We might want to find out the reasons for this and decide to interview the newspaper editors. By doing this, we would be doing some qualitative research.
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