What is research methodology?

Broadly speaking, research can be done according to two methods identified as:

a) Qualitative research

b) Quantitative research

Qualitative research aims a better understanding of people´s behavior, their attitudes, their beliefs and their fears. Its goal is to gather information the way people understand the world in which we live and to the meaning they attribute to their own experiences. Data are collected by means of interviews, focus groups, observations, analysis of documents and speeches.

By the other hand, typical objective of quantitative research is to count, organize and measure in order to describe, explain and predict. Quantitative research gathers data in numerical form for estimating averages, standard errors, confidence levels and margins of errors, test hypothesis, find patterns of relations between variables.

Qualitative research can be done involving only a few people in order, for instance, to collect words or expressions that were used to describe feelings experienced in a given situation – such as a huge fire. Following this, a quantitative research should be done by organizing a questionnaire with the words or expressions collected during the qualitative research. These would then be applied to a large number of respondents to compare the statistical distribution of the feelings expressed by different groups, considering age, sex, social class.

As another example, the researcher who wants to study the subjective experience of a mental illness would have to interview several patients and make a detailed analysis of the facts. But to describe the frequency and distribution of the illness in the population, the quantitative researcher must collect data of a representative sample of the population, which means participants selected at random. It follows that the two research methods are neither opposed nor opponents; on the contrary, they are complementary.

In some fields, researchers get involved in actual battles in order to determine the “best” research method; but the right thing to do would be to study the strategies in parallel. Qualitative research, as the less structured method, is required when facing lesser known realities, but in fields where knowledge is deeper, quantitative research is indicated. Therefore, qualitative research should precede quantitative research.

But researchers are right when they say that there is no point in arguing over which of the two is the most adequate research method. A researcher chooses the method according to the question he/she intends to answer and completes every job always bearing in mind that a quantitative study may raise questions that need to be dealt with by the qualitative method, and vice-versa. Competence of the researcher and a well designed study count most.

Historically, qualitative researches are rejected in health fields of study because extremely small samples sizes; they are not repeatable neither reproducible, so there is a risk of bias. For this reason they are considered by some as soft science. Anyway, neither quantitative nor qualitative research method can provide the truth about everything.

Let us give some examples where both methods qualitative and quantitative, can be used. Usually, research on voter´s intentions is done using the quantitative method. The researcher asks a large number of people the following question, “If the election was today, who would you vote for?”The percentage of votes for each candidate is then calculated, with margins of error at a level of significance. Then the research can declare quite confidently, “If the election was today, X would probably win.

On the occasion of election previews, the importance of qualitative research is much commented upon. In this kind of research, the interviewer would ask people, for example, “What qualities should a President of the Republic have?” or “What are the country´s main problems?” and afterwards he or she would analyse the answers.

As another example: in order to find the answer to the query “Taking into account sex and age groups, what proportion of smokers has already attempted to stop smoking?” a quantitative research would be needed. The researcher invites people to reply to a questionnaire. Then he/she calculates the percentages per sex and age group and makes generalizations within a certain margin of error. This is quantitative research.

But to find out what prevents people from giving up smoking, a qualitative research is required. The researcher would first ask the question “Why don´t you stop smoking?” Then, he/she would have a long conversation with each member of a small group trying to bring up reasons and opinions. Further analysis of data is fundamental.

As a final example, to find out what people understand by the legalization of drugs, the researcher would engage in qualitative research, interviewing a few individuals (about 20).To discover the percentage of individuals who are favorable to the legalization of drugs, and the distribution of this percentage by sex, age group, education level, social and economic levels, and region, the researcher would engage in quantitative research, interviewing many people (around 2000)