Collecting information is a quantitative expertise. Qualitative research is aimed at things like meanings, values, motivations – things that cannot be collected by pre-determined questions.

If you are using "closed-ended" questions that ask the participants to select among a set of pre-determined response options, then that is quantitative research.

David L Morgan Thanks for your answer! Then if I set the questionnaire to partly closed questions (basic information about the respondent: age/education etc.) The other part is set up as open-ended questions. In that case, is my questionnaire collecting quantitative or qualitative data?

A questionnaire is a general term for a tool (i.e., instrument) used for data collection in qualitative and quantitative research. The kind of statements on the questionnaire indicates their type. In other words, a quantitative questionnaire includes fully closed-ended/standardized questions/statements/items, while a qualitative questionnaire contains fully open-ended questions. On the other hand, combining closed-and open-ended items on a questionnaire makes it a mixed questionnaire. For germane deliberation, you could refer to Chapter 8 of Johnson and Christensen’s (2020) textbook, referenced below.

Johnson, B., & Christensen, L. B. (2020). Educational research: Quantitative, qualitative, and mixed approaches (7th ed.). SAGE. https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/educational-research/book259335

Good luck,

In general, a questionnaire that relied on open-ended items would be considered qualitative, but I agree that it is important to emphasize things such as interpretation and meaning as purposes in qualitative research.

A quantitative survey often uses demographic information for mainstream category representation. That said, including some fixed-option demographic items in a qualitative questionnaire to center respondents’ voices has no impact on its being qualitative—it is still a qualitative research tool. In their article, Braun et al. (2021) discussed the inclusion of closed-ended demographic items in a qualitative survey and rendered recommendations. Their insights can come in handy for your research. Below is the full citation.

Braun, V., Clarke, V., Boulton, E., Davey, L., & McEvoy, C. (2021). The online survey as a qualitative research tool. International Journal of Social Research Methodology, 24(6), 641–654. https://doi.org/10.1080/13645579.2020.1805550

Good luck,

interviews are qualitative. qualitative will help you find not just basic but quality data in totality.

Could be either. Interview could be qualitative when we describe or narrate the theme in words. It could be quantitative if we code the emerging themes and quantify them.