Empirical & Non-Empirical Research

Quantitative Research

Qualitative Research

Tests hypotheses born from theory

Generates understanding from patterns

Generalizes from a sample to the population

Applies ideas across contexts

Focuses on control to establish cause or permit prediction

Focuses on interpreting and understanding a social construction of meaning in a natural setting

Attends to precise measurements and objective data collection

Attends to accurate description of process via words, texts, etc., and observations

Favors parsimony and seeks a single truth

Appreciates complexity and multiple realities

Conducts analysis that yields a significance level

Conducts analysis that seeks insight and metaphor

Faces statistical complexity

Faces conceptual complexity

Conducts analysis after data collection

Conducts analysis along with data collection

Favors the laboratory

Favors fieldwork

Uses instruments with psychometric properties

Relies on researchers who have become skilled at observing, recording, and coding (researcher as instrument)

Generates a report that follows a standardized format

Generates a report of findings that includes expressive language and a personal voice

Uses designs that are fixed prior to data collection

Allows designs to emerge during study

Often measures a single-criterion outcome (albeit multidimensional)

Offers multiple sources of evidence (triangulation)

Often uses large sample sizes determined by power analysis or acceptable margins of error

Often studies single cases or small groups that build arguments for the study's confirmability

Uses statistical scales as data

Uses text as data

Favors standardized tests and instruments that measure constructs

Favors interviews, observations, and documents

Performs data analysis in a prescribed, standardized, linear fashion

Performs data analysis in a creative, iterative, nonlinear, holistic fashion

Uses reliable and valid data

Uses trustworthy, credible, coherent data