Should you do qualitative research or quantitative research? Here’s how to decide!

If you are starting your research journey and are troubled about what research design to use, you must read this post to guide you in making the right decision. I also had this dilemma because both designs are exciting to explore.

Whatever level you are at in your academic journey, the best thing for you to do is to go back to your RESEARCH QUESTION.

By asking these questions, it will narrow down your options on what design you should use.

When should one opt to have Mixed Method Design?

It all boils down to SATURATION and TRIAGULATION. If you think your questions were not satisfied by the qualitative data you have, go to random sampling and text those constructs you generated from your themes and investigate if these constructs are correlated or if one influences the other.

If you think there is more beyond the statistical significance you established, go for the explanatory approach by validating those numbers with narratives from your target participants, especially those with extreme scores in your first phase doing quantitative survey/evaluative method.

Researchers cannot flaunt their expertise in data analysis if those treatments are irrelevant to the research questions. It is funny to adjust the RQs just to fit into the result when it should be the results addressing the RQs. That’s what happens when you are more concerned about the design to explore, not the research question, which should be the one to set the direction of your methodology.

So, if you are still questioning what design you should use, read your RQs. Reflect on your domain of interest. What problem are you addressing? Then decide.