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If the same survey asked an open-ended follow-up question: “Why did you choose the brand of ice cream you bought?” you would receive qualitative insights that are unique to each respondent.
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Qualitative data represent opinions or feelings and cannot be represented by a numerical statistic such as an average.įor example, if a survey asked 500 respondents the question “Did you buy ice cream today?”, and 300 responded ‘yes’ while 200 responded ‘no’, we would know that 300/500 or 60% bought milk, a quantitative fact. The primary difference between quantitative and qualitative data is that quantitative data represents data that can easily be measured or quantified, such as the number of people who have bought a product. Difference Between Quantitative and Qualitative Data Jump to GeoPoll’s cheat sheet on qualitative vs quantitative research. While researchers can combine quantitative and qualitative methods to more fully answer their research questions, each has unique characteristics that should be considered throughout the lifecycle of a research project. Quantitative and qualitative research methods differ in several ways, including how quantitative and qualitative data is collected and analyzed and the type of insights that each method can provide.
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