2/19 Sources of quantitative data
We can gather quantitative data in a variety of ways and from a number of different sources. Many of these are similar to sources of qualitative data, for example:
- Questionnaires - a series of questions and other prompts for the purpose of gathering information from respondents
- Interviews - a conversation between two or more people (the interviewer and the interviewee) where questions are asked by the interviewer to obtain information from the interviewee - a more structured approach would be used to gather quantitative data
- Observation - a group or single participants are manipulated by the researcher, for example, asked to perform a specific task or action. Observations are then made of their user behaviour, user processes, workflows etc, either in a controlled situation (e.g. lab based) or in a real-world situation (e.g. the workplace)
- Transaction logs - recordings or logs of system or website activity
- Documentary research - analysis of documents belonging to an organisation
Why do we do quantitative data analysis?
Once you have collected your data you need to make sense of the responses you have got back. Quantitative data analysis enables you to make sense of data by:
- organising them
- summarising them
- doing exploratory analysis
And to communicate the meaning to others by presenting data as:
- tables
- graphical displays
- summary statistics
We can also use quantitative data analysis to see:
- where responses are similar , for example, we might find that the majority of students all go to the university library twice a week
- if there are differences between the things we have studied, for example, 1st year students might go once a week to the library, 2 nd year students twice a week and 3 rd year students three times a week
- if there is a relationship between the things we have studied. So, is there a relationship between the number of times a student goes to the library and their year of study?
