POL242Y1 Lecture Notes - Nomothetic, Content Analysis, Inductive Reasoning
21 Nov 2012
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Quantitative focus on statistical analyses of quantifiable data (analytical) One qualitative approach to poli sci research is to interview subjects about their knowledge of particular political events or processes. Such an approach is highly analogous to survey research which is a quantitative approach that also asks research subjects to respond to a series of questions. For the survey researcher, having a fixed set of possible response is crucial b/c it allows for application of statistical techniques to the data. Interviews force subjects to respond in limited number of ways to eliminate original creative or unexpected responses. Qualitative content analysis involves reading and coding passages of text. Quantitative involves mechanize analytic processes such as generating counts of specific words in a given set of documents. Difference: degree of involvement of researcher in the analytic process. The outcome is a relative de-emphasis of linguistic or discursive detail in quantitative research.
