Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Educational Research: Strenghs and Weaknesses

FET 8801 Research Methods in Education Quantitative and soft Approaches to Research (3,248 words) INTRODUCTION For thousands of years, philosophers and other academics have formulated and debated theories of familiarity in attempts to conceptualize and analyze reality. These ways of knowing atomic summate 18 commonly referred to as epistemologies which help us hold star of the world in which we live. Epistemological theories attempt to extension the wisdom of reality, truth, justice and the pursuit of knowledge (Evers and Walker, 1998: 29). In science, there argon 2 main theoretical approaches to question. The Quantitative impost relies on numerical data and has been associated with the positivist, empiricist and behaviourist schools of conception. Qualitative enquiry focuses on the collection of non-numerical data such as narratives and ambiguous interviews. The qualitative approach is often associated with post-positivist, hermeneutic or constructive schools of thou ght (Evers and Walker, 1998: 28). Each of these approaches depicts questioners with different paradigms or conceptions and views of research problems and methods. As a result, the conclusions generated from each of these methodologies are different. The purpose of this paper is to provide an depth psychology of both the quantitative and qualitative research traditions and to assess their respective(prenominal) strengths and weaknesses.

Moreover, this paper asserts that the underlying epistemological differences of quantitative and qualitative methods cogitate that they have very different ways of pinch and tran slation the world. Consequently, these tradi! tions should be viewed not as being in employment with each other but sooner as complimentary. A major theme presented in this paper is that we should make our research methods based upon what it is that we are trying to find come in instead of a blind allegiance to particular epistemological traditions. DIFFERENT shipway OF KNOWING First, it may be expedient to look at two examples in order to illustrate... If you emergency to get a wax essay, order it on our website: OrderCustomPaper.com

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