Hi Maria,

Despite some limitations in qualitative research, it has the following strengths that quantitative research can't match:

1) Qualitative research can delve into the complex research issues in detail & in-depth to solicit the understanding & meaning of human's experience and processes etc.

2) Research / interview questions can be dynamic i.e. can be guided / re-directed by researcher in real time

3) Research framework / direction can be quickly revised when new insights emerged

4) Albeit qualitative research findings can't be generalized but its inductive findings based on few cases / subjects can transfer to another research setting and contribute to knowledge e.g. Piaget managed to develop "Theory of Cognitive Development" based on qualitative data analysis / grounded theory approach.

Both quantitative and qualitative research are complementing each other based on their respective strengths and weaknesses, hence mixed method research are gaining popularity in some social science research nowadays.

You can obtain more info on the strengths / situation when to use qualitative research from an internet search.  All the best.

p/s: thanks for the question because it prompts novice researchers / post-graduate students to prepare / justify the strengths & weakness of each research methods as well as mixed method so that  they know how to defend themselves when they face methodology questions / critics from reviewer / examiner.

Regards,

Fung

qualitative methods are equally important if not more to understand any social sciences. Quantitative analysis has many limitations in terms of data analysis and statistical significance etc., we cannot get insights of the dialectical processes involved in the real economy or society from the quantitative data. Qualitative data overcomes all these limitations.

Hi Maria,

Despite some limitations in qualitative research, it has the following strengths that quantitative research can't match:

1) Qualitative research can delve into the complex research issues in detail & in-depth to solicit the understanding & meaning of human's experience and processes etc.

2) Research / interview questions can be dynamic i.e. can be guided / re-directed by researcher in real time

3) Research framework / direction can be quickly revised when new insights emerged

4) Albeit qualitative research findings can't be generalized but its inductive findings based on few cases / subjects can transfer to another research setting and contribute to knowledge e.g. Piaget managed to develop "Theory of Cognitive Development" based on qualitative data analysis / grounded theory approach.

Both quantitative and qualitative research are complementing each other based on their respective strengths and weaknesses, hence mixed method research are gaining popularity in some social science research nowadays.

You can obtain more info on the strengths / situation when to use qualitative research from an internet search.  All the best.

p/s: thanks for the question because it prompts novice researchers / post-graduate students to prepare / justify the strengths & weakness of each research methods as well as mixed method so that  they know how to defend themselves when they face methodology questions / critics from reviewer / examiner.

Regards,

Fung

.

me seems qualitative research and quantitative research are more in a dialectical relationship than complementing each other ; quantitative research operates on "data" but "data do not grow on trees", data are the result of a technical process and, as such, quantitative research is blind to anything ignored or obliterated by this process (think of the "statistical aggregates" in public statistics ("the unemployed", say) and their somewhat weak link to the reality they are supposed to capture)

the role of qualitative research is to submit this data construction process and the resulting categories to a constant critique ... and as such it will always be considered as the black sheep (but a reference to Andersen's Ugly Duckling would seem more appropriate to me !)

.

We keep discussing about big data and data mining. Do you think that content analysis on the many and rich resources we have online, such as blogs, consumer reviews... can be an excellent source of knowledge?

Hi Maria,

Yes agreed on your thought.  In fact more and more organizations are leveraging on big data analytics to process and generate new knowledge / insight from the data and information already available in the marketplace.  There are many sources of data / information and there are several big data analytic applications (I mean usage not software) we can use which include: 1) Recommendation, 2) Clustering, 3) Classification, 4) Frequent pattern mining.  To understand more on what is big data, its analytics and use cases for the analytics, you might want to refer my article on this link:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/236863297_Using_Big_Data_Analytics_in_Information_Technology_%28IT%29_Service_Delivery

Note: the use cases are confined to the IT service delivery and not marketing, business etc.

Regards,

Fung

Article Using Big Data Analytics in Information Technology (IT) Serv...