Human Resource Development

Quantitative research would be interested in answering questions such as:

• Do these snack cakes sell more during certain times of the year than other times?
• How much money do consumers spend on these snack cakes per month? Per year?
• What is the average price of these snack cakes and how do the prices differ across the U.S. and the world?
• How much profit do these snack cakes make?
• How much does it cost to buy the individual ingredients used to make a single Twinkie? A Ho-Ho? A Ding-Dong? How much does it cost to package them?
• Is there a statistical relationship between buying these snack cakes with buying other kinds of snack cakes and/or other products (such as milk)?
• What is the target demographic of these snack cake consumers?

Qualitative research would be interested in answering questions such as:

• Why do people like Twinkies, Ho-Hos, and Ding-Dongs?
• What makes these snack cakes "better" or "worse" than similar snack cakes of other brands?
• What are some of the motivations as to why people eat snack cakes?
• What do people like/dislike about the logo(s) on the snack cake packaging? What about the packaging itself?
• How important are such factors as calories, sugar, trans fat, etc. when deciding to buy a snack cake?

In the example questions, a general pattern should emerge:

• The quantitative questions seek to provide answers of quantity and objective measurement
• The qualitative questions seek to provide answers of quality and subjective measurement

Understand that neither of these approaches to research is "right" or "wrong;" it all depends the research questions you want to answer and how you want to answer them. Many research questions could be answered in different ways using either approach.