MRU Qualitative Research Discussion

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Qualitative research is descriptive in nature and is mainly used to investigate and understand human behavior. This type of research is often used to investigate complex and controversial issues to gain better comprehension. Qualitative research is usually conducted in small-scale settings such as face-to-face interviews. Comparatively, quantitative research is empirical in nature as it is used to gather data that can be measured and examined. This kind of research is frequently used to investigate correlations between variables or test hypotheses. Unlike qualitative research, quantitative research is typically conducted in large-scale surveys (Haber, 2021; Mehrad & Zangeneh, 2019).

Qualitative and quantitative methods have their pros and cons, and which one is better depends on the research question and the kind of information being gathered. Qualitative research is better for exploring new ideas, while quantitative research is better for testing hypotheses. When compared to quantitative research, qualitative research is frequently perceived as being more exploratory and open-ended. Conversely, quantitative research is often seen as providing more reliable results than qualitative research, since it relies on hard data that can be objectively analyzed (Rutberg & Bouikidis, 2018).