Research diary 1

Doing a academic research is one of the way to find out a social issue and also it’s the way to make our research more credible and reliable. There are two main method to help us doing the research, it is Qualitative way and Quantitative way.



First Qualitative is focus on finding the reason why people acting in a specific action. This method is more focus on the reason more than the number of people or things. So those researcher will use the other way to connect the data, for example, interviewing a small group of people or make a Questionnaire with some opening question. In the Questionnaire, those researcher will use “why”, “what” or “how” as the beginning of the question. When people answering the questionnaire, they will give more specific detail to the research. Then those researcher will analysis those data and find out the reason. At the least of the research, those researcher will according the data and emphasizes the content of the research, then they will launch a whole new theory or using one theory to explain the result.

On the other hand, Quantitative is focus on the number more than the reason. Simply specking, quantitative method is connecting the data form the large group of people for measuring study. This method was used for doing some biggest social issue research, like population research. Or when there are different people, those researcher will using information graphics to separate those data in a few groups. This method will show us the main direction of the whole problem, not just depend on one or two opinion. In this method, those researcher will not using interview as the way to connect data, they will create a questionnaire with close ending question, for example, “Yes”, “No” question, or rating question. This method is also the way could connect large data as fast as possible.

Each method have different strengths and weakness. Quantitative can connect a large data in a short time and it’s also can help the research separate in few different groups, but those data can not show us the specific reason in the research result. Those data can only tell us how many different group of people in the research and make the result more clearly. And there also too many audiences may reduce the reliability and validity. So researcher must choose the audiences randomly. It will cost so much man power in the research.

Qualitative is the opposite of Quantitative. Qualitative method can tell us the reason of those target audiences behavior. But it’s also cost too many time because of analysis each different data one by one. Those researcher had to focus on one specific group and analysis the data which connected form the group. it’s may inferred the reason but it cannot tell us how many target audiences were joining the research.

Yuen, Hoi Wang Patrick