What are the pros and cons of quantitative versus qualitative research designs? How do mixed method approaches incorporate the advantages of both approaches?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

Quantitative designs allow researchers to translate observations into numeric variables that can be analyzed to determine whether the strength of relationships is greater than one would expect from chance alone. They also allow researchers to establish cause and effect relationships. However, quantitative results lack context and an in-depth understanding of how participants thought about the questions and concepts relevant to the study. Qualitative methods provide data on people’s subjective experiences and can be used to better represent the experiences of marginalized groups by better communicating their voices. Mixed methods approaches allow researchers to take advantage of the contextual detail of qualitative data to shape their research questions and designs while using quantitative methods to numerically describe relationships between variables and to determine causality.