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A criticism of quantitative coding approaches is that such coding sorts qualitative data into predefined categories that are reflective of the categories found in objective science. The variety, richness, and individual characteristics of the qualitative data are reduced or, even, lost.
Gary Goertz and James Mahoney dispute that the main difference between qualitative and quantitative research is the size of N. Instead, a primary difference is that qualitative scholars tend to do within-case analyses whereas quantitative scholars almost by definition do cross-case analyses. [13]
For example, qualitative data analysis often involves a fairly structured approach to coding raw data into systematic information and quantifying intercoder reliability. [2] There is often a more complex relationship between "qualitative" and "quantitative" approaches than would be suggested by drawing a simple distinction between them.
For example, based on analysis of the history of science, Kuhn concludes that "large amounts of qualitative work have usually been prerequisite to fruitful quantification in the physical sciences". [8] Qualitative research is often used to gain a general sense of phenomena and to form theories that can be tested using further quantitative research.
In science and research, an attribute is a quality of an object (person, thing, etc.). [1] Attributes are closely related to variables. A variable is a logical set of attributes. [1] Variables can "vary" – for example, be high or low. [1]
A categorical variable that can take on exactly two values is termed a binary variable or a dichotomous variable; an important special case is the Bernoulli variable. Categorical variables with more than two possible values are called polytomous variables ; categorical variables are often assumed to be polytomous unless otherwise specified.
Qualitative properties are properties that are observed and can generally not be measured with a numerical result, unlike quantitative properties, which have numerical characteristics. Description [ edit ]
The latter offers an articulate method of collecting, classifying, and analyzing data using five possible angles of analysis (at least three) to maximize the research's objectivity and permit an understanding of the phenomena under investigation as complete as possible: qualitative and quantitative methods, literature reviews (including ...