Data Analysis: Types of Data

What is qualitative data?

Data that is descriptive - it’s about words, meanings, or experiences, not numbers. It tells you people’s thoughts, feelings, attitudes, or explanations.

• E.g. Interview transcripts about how people feel after an event, open-ended questionnaire answers.

What is quantitative data?

Data that can be measured or counted — it’s numerical. It tells you how much, how many, or how often something happens.

• Example formats: Numbers, scores, percentages, reaction times, etc.

• E.g. Number of words recalled in a memory test (e.g. 7 words), reaction time in seconds (e.g. 1.3s), rating on a scale (e.g. 1–10 on happiness)

What are the strengths of qualitative data?

• Rich, detailed insights - takes a deeper look into the thoughts, feelings and opinions of the participants

• Helps understand meaning and context - tells us the reasoning behind the numbers

What are the weaknesses of qualitative data?

• Harder to analyse (subjective, open to interpretation)

• Difficult to compare or summarise numerically

• Vulnerable to researcher bias because the findings depend on the researcher’s subjective interpretation, which can reduce objectivity and reliability

What are the strengths of Quantitative Data?

• Easy to analyse (you can calculate means and averages, correlations, see patterns, use graphs etc., also making it easier to compare)

• Objective — less open to interpretation

What are the weaknesses of quantitative data?

• Lack of depth in detail

• Doesn’t always show why or how something happens

• Can miss the richness of human experience

• Participants can’t develop their opinions = low external validity

What is primary data?

When information is obtained first-hand by the researcher for an investigation, specially for the purpose of the study.

Gathered by conducting:

• Experiments

• Questionnaires

• Interviews

• Observations

What is secondary data?

When information is collected by someone else other than the researcher yet is used by the researcher for their investigation. Isn’t specific to the purpose of the study. AKA ‘desk research’.

May be located in:

• Journal articles

• Books

• Websites

What are the strengths of primary data?

• Targets the exact information which the researcher needs, so the data fits their aims and objectives

• Authentic data obtained from participants themselves for the purpose of the investigation

What are the weaknesses of primary data?

• Requires time and effort

• Can be expensive

• Requires considerable planning, preparation, and resources, and this is a limitation when compared with secondary data which may be accessed within a matter of minutes

What are the strengths of secondary data?

• Cheap

• Data is accessed so requires minimal effort to collect

What are the weaknesses of secondary data?

• Data can be outdated or incomplete

• Data may not be reliable - the researcher was not there when the study was conducted so validity of results isn’t ensured

• The data may not quite match the researcher’s needs or objectives

What is meta-anslysis?

When a researcher combines results from many different studies and uses all the data to form an overall view of the subject they’re investigating.

What are the strengths of meta-analysis?

• More generalisability is possible as a larger amount of data is studied

• The researcher is able to view the evidence with more confidence as there’s a lot of it

What are the weaknesses of meta-analysis?

• Publication bias such as the file drawer problem may be presented - when the researcher intentionally doesn’t publish all the data from relevant studies but instead chooses to leave out the negative results, giving a false representation of what the researcher was investigating

Which is better qualitative or quantitative data?

Neither really, it depends on the purpose and aims of the researcher. Also there’s a significant overlap between the two:

• Researchers collecting quantitative data as part of an experiment may often interview participants as a way of gaining more qualitative insight into their experience of the investigation

• Similarly, there are a number of ways in which qualitative information can be converted into numerical data.