SBSF 8427- Foundation Research Seminar 2

Research Design in Education
Instructor: Marilyn K. Simon, Ph.D.

Week 1 Exercise

Steven R. Van Hook

June 13, 2003

Walden University

Ph.D. in Education Program
Specialization: Transcultural Distance Learning

Research Design in Education: Week 1 Exercise

The question at hand: "Do you consider yourself more of a qualitative researcher or a quantitative researcher?" In short, I consider myself more of a qualitative researcher. This is especially fortunate since my dissertation topic will involve considerable qualitative research methods. My dissertation research will focus on identifying means and methods for transcending cultural differences in a classroom setting through transculturally resonant messages and images, with a measurement group of diverse international students attending the University of California at Santa Barbara. 
 	Leedy and Ormrod (2001) provide a concise and cogent contrast between quantitative and qualitative methods. Though both models of research may involve similar scientific processes (e.g., hypothesis, experiment, conclusion), quantitative researchers seek to isolate a study’s variables with strict controls and precise analysis of research data, while qualitative researchers may often simply watch and ask, then end up with “tentative answers or hypotheses about what was observed” (p. 101).
	Qualitative research may be said to search for the why of a matter (McBride & Schostak), while quantitative research may attempt to calculate how many. Qualitative research may also involve a more holistic approach to a matter, taking a perhaps braver stab at examining the greater significance of a matter, not easily measured and quantified in much less subjective units of data. 

Given my proclivity to seek a systems context for social issues and the interrelatedness of diverse fields, I tend to focus on the why questions. As a journalist, I discovered the why questions are typically the hardest for a newsmaker to answer, and the sort of questions you gradually work up to through a process of quantitative inquiry (the who, when, and what data). These quantitative questions tend to be simpler to answer, and develop a rhythm and confidence in the newsmaker's answers. Then come the more difficult, yet more crucial and illuminating why questions which frequently get to the heart of the story.
 	Psychologist Viktor Frankl (1973) was often to observe that those who have a why can suffer any how. Why provides meaning, why provides context, why provides a heart to our quantitative research; at least to the issue of why it matters. Children are too often the embodiment of a qualitative researcher, with their endless why questions. As children do, the qualitative researcher may be defined as one to satisfy a wonder by wandering to “where the action is and simply watching and listening” (Babbie, 2001, p. 291).
 	Qualitative research may provide a richer context for the research results, though qualitative research may provide more precise data. I find a parallel to the quantitative versus qualitative preference in the comparison of analog and digital systems. Analog waves provide a rich continuum of quality source information, large and full, chewing up high levels of bandwidth. Digital signals, however, provide a finite sampling of the infinite spread of an analogue wave, reducing the data to a much smaller quantity, which serves to translate the full analogue signal to an acceptably inferior though handier substitute. Analog signals are of a higher quality, at least in terms of fidelity to the original source. Digital signals, though inferior to the original fullness of the signal, provide easily replicable content in discrete measurements of quantifiable data. As an artistic purist, I prefer the quality of analog signals over the more efficient quantity savings of digitized data.
 	Common vernacular as well may support my preference for qualitative over a quantitative approach to research. A lecturer may often admonish a class that quality is preferable over quantity (as indeed is implied in the syllabus for this very course). Of course, the issue of quantity in this context may address a dearth as well as a deluge of content. Quantity in itself is value neutral, while quality stands as its own measure.

Babbie, E. (2001). The practice of social research. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Frankl, V. (1973). Man’s search for meaning. New York: Pocket Books. 
Leedy, P. & Ormrod, J. (2001). Practical research: Planning and design. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
 
McBride, R. & Schostak, J. What is qualitative research? Retrieved June 10, 2003, from http://www.uea.ac.uk/care/elu/Issues/Research/Res1Ch1.html