Quantative and Qualatative Research

In our first lecture for Applied media research, we learnt about Quantitative Research, which was a useful way of gathering information from a wide audience.

There were 5 types of Quantitative Research Techniques;
- Online Surveys
- Questionnaires
- Voting Polls
- Telephone Surveys
- Census

I learned than this was a way of gathering research from a big group of people, and that your answers couldn't gather a detailed answer, as with the questions you would see within a Quantitative questionnaire, the answering criteria would be limited and you could give reasoning to your answers, so this type of research would be best suited to brands to see if consumers thought their product worked. e.g. on hair product advertisements it often says something like "90% of users said they noticed visible differences". This was Quantitative Research.

I had already created questionnaires previously in lower education so I was already aware of how useful this type of research could be.

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We also learned about Qualitative Research which was completely different method of gathering data, this would consist of more broadened answers that would relate to something much much specific, generating a much more detailed answer.

This for me was a useful way of getting an evaluation on something you have previously researched, this could be used to gather key points in conclusive research. e.g. if you have previously gave out Quantitative questionnaires, and you received an answer that was of interest of you and you wanted to further investigate why people had chose a certain answer, you would then ask another series of questions that was concentrated around that previous question, this is Qualitative Research.

I had never had any previous experience with Qualatitive research but felt I could learn alot from it, and would benefit in the future from gathering this sort of data.