quantitative research techniques

quantitative research techniques

any research method that results in the data being expressed in numerical form.

There may be some dispute over the inclusion of ordinal data, since this describes the situation where categories of observations are assigned numbers because one category can be ‘ordered’. Such data is generally considered to be quantitative even though the numbers have no real value or equal distance between them (see CRITERIA AND LEVELS OF MEASUREMENT). There is no dispute over the status of interval and ratio data within quantitative methods. See also RESEARCH METHODS for a discussion of the pros and cons of quantitative and qualitative research methods.