A500.7.3.RB_Quantitative Research Reflection

Data, data, data… those are the first words that come into my mind when I think of quantitative research.  Quantitative research is what you think of when you think back to what you learned in your high school science classes (although we didn’t necessarily call it by that term) essentially that is what we were conducing except now it has more steps and is more in depth.

You start with an idea, something you want to test. What you want to test can be something personal, for instance my action research project will be on a personal interest, but your topic can be something in the social significance spectrum, theoretical or ethical.  Whether you are testing to prove it wrong or right you are still testing your starting point which is the hypothesis and asking the question “how.” When I think of how the term “how” and how it will be incorporated in my research I ask myself these questions, “how will this affect my life”(this is relating to the purpose of my research) and “how will this make the research more clear” (addressing “how” from a structural standpoint). From there you begin conducting your research which is different than that of a qualitative research method; in this case you are aiming for more measurable data, I like to think of measurable data as something tangible. With qualitative research I don’t feel like I can touch the results but in quantitative research I feel as though I can reach out and touch it.

The process for conducting a proper quantitative research study is to begin with your research idea, conduct literature reviews, formulate your research problem, build you research questions, starting planning your research process, collect the data and analyze it, make sure to answer the questions you stated in the beginning, interpret your results, use comparison and conclude. If one follows these steps correctly they will end up with a proper and hopefully successful research study. When a researcher combines the purpose of the study, data and adds interpretation, the research study is bound to have a solid conclusion.

Research has to be methodical in the sense that it needs to have structure and flow. This is the part of the study where the research design is important.  Structure is something I know and have grown to love. The way I conduct my assignments now is a good representation of how much I like structure and flow. This need for structure also relates back to my A-type personality and perfectionist side (and I digress). Structure in quantitative research is very important because it ensures that the researcher uses the data or evidence obtained and is able to answer the initial questions stated in the beginning.

If all of these steps are combined properly the research should speak for itself. Although I do like this style of research I think at times it need to be incorporated with qualitative research to allow for the study to be more well rounded. I think back to my younger years and I remember my 6^th grade science and math teacher teaching us the difference between quantitative and qualitative and he described them as, “think quality when you think of qualitative and then quantity or amount when think of quantitative” and he was right.