Читать книгу Methods in Psychological Research - Annabel Ness Evans - Страница 44

In essence, quantitative research in psychology measures differences in the amount of behavior. What causes people to become more or less aggressive? What factors increase or decrease interpersonal attraction? Does a particular treatment reduce symptoms of depression? Do children diagnosed with autism engage in less play behavior than children not diagnosed with autism? In other words, we are measuring the quantity of a behavior, often because we wonder what causes the behavior to increase or decrease in quantity.

Qualitative research in psychology, on the other hand, describes differences in the kind or quality of behavior. What does aggressive behavior look like compared with nonaggressive behavior? What is the nature of interpersonal attraction? What do depressed people think or say about themselves? What kinds of play behavior are typical of children diagnosed with autism? It is the nature or quality of the behavior that interests the qualitative researcher.

Quantitative research always involves numbers that reflect the amount of behavior.Qualitative research often involves narrative descriptions of what behavior looks like. A tally of how many self-harm behaviors Susie exhibits in a day would be quantitative data. A description of the nature of those self-harm behaviors would be qualitative data.