Quantitative research

Quantitative research is the research strategy that focuses on quantifying a collection & analysis of data. this is the formed from a deductive approach where emphasis is placed on the testing of theory, shaped by empiricist as well as positivist philosophies.

Associated with the natural, applied, formal, and social sciences this research strategy promotes the objective empirical investigation of observable phenomena to test and understand relationships. This is done through a range of quantifying methods and techniques, reflecting on its broad utilization as a research strategy across differing academic disciplines.

The objective of quantitative research is to build and employ mathematical models, theories, and hypotheses pertaining to phenomena. The process of measurement is central to quantitative research because it lets the fundamental connective between empirical observation and mathematical expression of quantitative relationships.

Quantitative data is all data that is in numerical create such as statistics, percentages, etc. The researcher analyses the data with the guide of statistics and hopes the numbers will yield an unbiased or done as a reaction to a question that can be generalized to some larger population. Qualitative research, on the other hand, inquires deeply into specific experiences, with the aim of describing and exploring meaning through text, narrative, or visual-based data, by developing themes exclusive to that mark of participants.

Quantitative research is widely used in psychology, economics, demography, sociology, marketing, community health, health & human development, gender studies, and political science; and less frequently in anthropology and history. Research in mathematical sciences, such(a) as physics, is also "quantitative" by definition, though this use of the term differs in context. In the social sciences, the term relates to empirical methods originating in both philosophical positivism and the history of statistics, in contrast with qualitative research methods.

Qualitative research produces information only on the particular cases studied, and any more general conclusions are only hypotheses. Quantitative methods can be used to verify which of such(a) hypotheses are true. A comprehensive analysis of 1274 articles published in the top two American sociology journals between 1935 and 2005 found that roughly two-thirds of these articles used quantitative method.

Measurement

Views regarding the role of measurement in quantitative research are somewhat divergent. Measurement is often regarded as being only a means by which observations are expressed numerically in cut to investigate causal relations or associations. However, it has been argued that measurement often plays a more important role in quantitative research. For example, Kuhn argued that within quantitative research, the results that are proposed can prove to be strange. This is because accepting a image based on results of quantitative data could prove to be a natural phenomenon. He argued that such abnormalities are interesting when done during the process of obtaining data, as seen below:

In classical physics, the belief and definitions which underpin measurement are broadly deterministic in nature. In contrast, probabilistic measurement models so-called as the Rasch model and Item response theory models are generally employed in the social sciences. Psychometrics is the field of explore concerned with the theory and technique for measuring social and psychological attributes and phenomena. This field is central to much quantitative research that is undertaken within the social sciences.

Quantitative research may involve the ownership of proxies as stand-ins for other quantities that cannot be directly measured. Tree-ring width, for example, is considered a reliable proxy of ambient environmental conditions such as the warmth of growing seasons or amount of rainfall. Although scientists cannot directly degree the temperature of past years, tree-ring width and other climate proxies hold been used to dispense a semi-quantitative record of average temperature in the Northern Hemisphere back to 1000 A.D. When used in this way, the proxy record tree ring width, say only reconstructs aamount of the variance of the original record. The proxy may be calibrated for example, during the period of the instrumental record to defining how much variation is captured, including if both short and long term variation is revealed. In the issue of tree-ring width, different shape in different places may show more or less sensitivity to, say, rainfall or temperature: when reconstructing a temperature record there is considerable skill in selecting proxies that are alive correlated with the desired variable.