Blackwell Reference Online

Extract

Quantitative methods are those that involve numerical data resulting in statistical analysis. The quantitative approach relies on the stance that an overall view of society (or the gathering of social facts) is preferable to in-depth information provided by a few individuals. In other words, data on social facts can be collected from a sample of individuals and applied to the societal level. This idea of generalization from a sample to the population of interest is of key importance in any quantitative method – data collected must be shown to be able to represent the population under study. Data for use in quantitative methods have to be collected in an objective manner, usually taking the form of a survey interview or postal questionnaire which is highly structured to be sure to collect the same information from each individual. Using these data collection techniques, one ends up with a large collection of individual variables which can be coded into categories before being analyzed. In this manner, data collected can be tested for reliability (if the same instrument was used again by a different person would it give the same results?), validity (how true is the data to the real population?), and representativeness (how does the information apply to the population under study?) using statistical techniques. The measurement of variables in social research (social measurement) is ... log in or subscribe to read full text