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Quantitative Research
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Qualitative Research
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Tests hypotheses born from theory
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Generates understanding from patterns
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Generalizes from a sample to the population
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Applies ideas across contexts
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Focuses on control to establish cause or permit prediction
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Focuses on interpreting and understanding a social construction of meaning in a natural setting
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Attends to precise measurements and objective data collection
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Attends to accurate description of process via words, texts, etc., and observations
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Favors parsimony and seeks a single truth
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Appreciates complexity and multiple realities
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Conducts analysis that yields a significance level
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Conducts analysis that seeks insight and metaphor
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Faces statistical complexity
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Faces conceptual complexity
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Conducts analysis after data collection
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Conducts analysis along with data collection
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Favors the laboratory
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Favors fieldwork
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Uses instruments with psychometric properties
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Relies on researchers who have become skilled at observing, recording, and coding (researcher as instrument)
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Generates a report that follows a standardized format
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Generates a report of findings that includes expressive language and a personal voice
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Uses designs that are fixed prior to data collection
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Allows designs to emerge during study
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Often measures a single-criterion outcome (albeit multidimensional)
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Offers multiple sources of evidence (triangulation)
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Often uses large sample sizes determined by power analysis or acceptable margins of error
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Often studies single cases or small groups that build arguments for the study's confirmability
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Uses statistical scales as data
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Uses text as data
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Favors standardized tests and instruments that measure constructs
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Favors interviews, observations, and documents
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Performs data analysis in a prescribed, standardized, linear fashion
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Performs data analysis in a creative, iterative, nonlinear, holistic fashion
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Uses reliable and valid data
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Uses trustworthy, credible, coherent data
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