Introducing Research Approaches in Education (A Resume of Introduction to Research in Education, Donald Ary et al p. 22-25, 8th Ed)

It is mentioned by Ary et al (2010) that the main difference possessed by both quantitative and qualitative research are based on the philosophical assumption. The root of quantitative thought is based on the positivism which existed around 19^th century. Positivists believe that everything should be tested both empirically and logically by following some research procedures (Amir Syarifuddin, 2015). They also believe that the general principles of social science is just the same with the principles of physical world (Ary et al, 2010). Thus, by some objective procedures, the researchers are able to discover these principles which are useful to understand human behavior. The traditional scientific method which is used by positivists to find dependable knowledge involves hypothesis testing and objective data gathering to meet systematic, generalizable, and open to replicate by other investigators. Hence, this kind of research is also called by the deductive one because we can create a hypothesis in the beginning.

The qualitative method is applied by the different philosophical approach. It starts by the belief that a person is interconnected with others, which means a man would have no existence without others. In quantitative research, the researchers try to find what people do. Meanwhile qualitative research highlights the way how people think and feel. Ary et al (2010) povits that we cannot deny people’s reality. That is why, the result of qualitative study is a comprehensive and rich narrative report. Besides, because of the researcher cannot interpret how naturally some events occur, then they cannot make any hypothesis in the beginning. Next, we call this qualitative research as an inductive one.

Aside from those two big approaches of research, Ary et al (2010) also provides another approach which involves the combination of both qualitative and quantitative research, namely mixed method. Historically, this mixed method found when the qualitative and quantitative researchers based had some adversarial. However, after realizing that those two methods are complementary, finally they decided to use this mixed method to find more dependable  knowledge. However, the more complete materials about mixed method approach is not explained more in this chapter. Ary et al (2010) elucidates more in the following chapter. 

Next, at these earlier pages, Ary et al (2010) presents a table that distinguish quantitative and qualitative thought to ease the readers the differences of those two. The table is presented below:

 

 

	Quantitative	Qualitative
Purpose	To study relationship, case and effect	To examine a phenomenon as it is, in rich detail
Design	Developed prior to study	Flexible, evolves during study
Approach	Deductive; test theory	Inductive, may generate theory
Tools	Uses preselected instruments	The researcher is primary data collection tool
Sample	Uses large samples	Uses small samples
Analysis	Statistical Analysis of numeric data	Narrative description and interpretation

 

Table 1. Comparison of Quantitative and Qualitative Research, Ary et al (2010), p. 25