Introduction to Sociology/Sociological Methods

Quantitative and Qualitative

Many sociological investigator can use Quantitative and Qualitative method or both of them. Someone who use quantitative methods split people according to the criteria. (The criteria can be Income, Fame, Authority etc.) And quantitative sociologists collect data from each groups and analyze them.
Example of quantitative methods are experimental designs, surveys, secondary data analysis, and statistical analysis.

One of other way to get data is Qualitative methods. Sociologist who want to get deeper verstehen about social phenomena or relationship between variables use qualitative methods. To reach a depth in analysis, Sociologist often give up on quantitative methods.
Example of qualitative methods is participant observation, interviews, focus groups, content analysis and historical comparison.

There are sociologists who use only one methods, but many sociologists combine both methods. Because quantitative methods is used to get statistical data, and the other is used to get depth understanding about social phenomena. And sociologist need both of them.



Both methods is important but I think data from qualitative methods is more valuable. In science, quantitative methods have exactness. Nature is always show similar result. They are less affected by variables than society. Nowadays, in contrary, society has become more complicated and has too may variables. Also society changes more and more fast. So data gotten by quantitative methods can be meaningless easily.



As noted previously, I think quantitative methods can be affected by variables easily. But, to apply data to studies, sociologist should remove variables. I wonder how they can do that.