Pesquisa Qualitativa e Quantitativa

qualitative research is primarily about words and their meanings and I say meanings deliberately because the same word can have quite different meanings to different individuals take the word syringe it means to a dentist relieving pain to a patient it can mean pain so there are quite a lot of differences whereas an in quantitative research what you're much more interested in is numbers and their system and their significance which may be educationally significant as well as statistically significant so those are the two basic things and from that you can expand and develop the whole notions of

qualitative and quantitative research qualitative is more arts based if you like quantitative is much more science based but both are necessary first of all qualitative research can be as a primary if you're not clear about what you're doing if you want to explore all of those things that's really a very important secondly after you've done some quantitative research there may be particular groups of people what we call outliers you may want to study them that's the kind of structural thing but there's also what you can tap into with qualitative research you can tap into attitudes

feelings you can get at the inner thoughts of the person much much more than you can on a survey or a questionnaire or a test the masses of things really which you can get from a qualitative research much more so than quantitative you another example if you don't mind from medical education no amount of statistics and surveys can tell you how it feels to be dying of cancer you need to talk to people explore with them all the things all their inner feelings you which can't capture in a survey or in a medical diagnosis you

might want to use it particularly if you're uncertain or you've only got very small sample of people and you're not really clear exactly what you're looking for for example it was a very famous study where people were interested in how people of our students read articles and so what they did was they actually used a qualitative approach of watching a person read a student region article than asking questions about how he read it and that was really a very powerful way that you couldn't have got at by any method so you use it really for

getting at parts of which other forms of research can't easily reach to be able to ask questions skillfully in a way which takes into account the people they're talking to which listens to what they say sympathetically and perceptively who respond and Pathak ly they don't actually make judgments about what this person is telling them but they just listen and nod and accept that they're doing and they watch carefully too because that's ever so important you can pick up a lot from people's nonverbal cues so those are the things that you're really essential if you're going

to be a good qualitative researcher and you can't just do it you've got to learn how to do it the most common method is the interview but people think about the interview is just a simply a matter of question and answer is not a good qualitative interview is open where the interviewee talks much much more than the interviewer and it may also have a particular task like we may ask a question a scientific question such as why why do balls bounce which may seems trivial but in fact you can tap into children's and adults understanding

of what's actually going on in terms of physics from relatively straightforward questions and that's a very important aspect as well as getting their attitudes and views and opinions and people neglect that to some extent you need to be able to listen sensitively and watch carefully what the person is saying and doing and you know the way they're speaking and their gestures all of that you know that's really central and you need to develop your skills in that area of course there are things you need to know like being able to ask questions of the person

so that you ask them in a way which is meaningful and safe for them but even if you're not if you're doing direct observation you've got to ask yourself the right questions what am I looking for here what particular thing because that again will sharpen your perception and you'll focus on the same on the right thing I mean if you take for example looking at a painting if you know what you're looking for you can see much more than if you just look at the painting and it's same with observation and I'm interviewing too the

big football is to establish a good relationship with the interviewer your participant so that they block they don't actually tell you what they really think and so on so you never find that you never get into the self disclosure the self revelation the confidential remarks because you blocked it by being aggressive or farting superior all of that so I think it's very important to establish a good relationship empathic empathically with your person and not to make judgments just met have a good relationship with them and let them tell you what they were the most common

and probably the most ill used method of research are questionnaires the ubiquitous questionnaire and you really need to spend a lot of time design here the second one is structured interviews and they're fairly useless frankly because you might as well send them a questionnaire if you just can't ask them close questions a third approach is direct observation which is very structured that can also be quite a powerful way of checking what people do it's really an evaluation exercise rather than an exploratory exercise but again that's very very useful so those I would say were my

three main approaches the first classic error is the main part of long and they ask lots of questions which are not relevant which is sticking just in case instead of thinking out clearly what exactly do they want to find out the second question is the second weaknesses the questions are really ambiguous that's what in some sociologists call high context unless you know what was in the mind of the questioner you wouldn't be able to understand what the question is about and so you some are you've got to think about it in relation to the particular

people whom your question giving the questionnaire to and express it in language which they will understand that really is so those are two are the two really major things I would say about questionnaires let's begin with the questionnaire well-designed that is it's meaningful and the answers the question which you wanted time so you then you've got to do into what you are into your survey and you've got to be realistic you nobody's going to give you millions of pounds to do across national survey so you just have to take what you've got and sitting doing

the best you can with it but make sure you've got a reasonably sized sample for what you're doing that's also difficult to say depends on the question but you know 100 to 200 is really very comfortable to have it you then need to think about whether you're going to split it in some way because every question in a sense has a hypothesis under E including the biographical data so supposing you doing a questionnaire on what their attitude is towards statistics amongst psychologists say then you might want to say what is the difference between males and

females on this is there a difference between people in their first year and in their final year and you need to think about all those different questions but the more of those questions you have the more lengthy your a data analysis will be because then you come to the second which is the really important bits for me to publish to interpret and publish the first thing is to remember that those are really a symbolic representation of the meanings of the words and the that can be quite a tenuous link the second thing is that to

realize that you can't ever get a perfectly statistical analysis whatever you do there are things you know you could find site racism sorry so you just choose what's what's best for you and I suppose finally don't be afraid of using simple techniques rather than highly complex ones simple techniques give you a much clearer picture complex techniques can obscure so go for go for the simple Occam's razor