PEOPLE vs. NUMBERS
We often read through articles in journals that state how many participants/subjects were studied or observed during the course of their respective research period.
While this is an acceptable practice, it can be quite catastrophic to ignore the fact that these studies actually deal with people and not unfeeling, sterilized numbers.
The purpose of reducing each person/individual participant in the research to abstract numbers by way of analyzing their responses/behaviors is to remove all distractors and remain hyper focused on the task of the research objective set in the study/project.
This translates to Quantitative studies enjoying a more robust place in the research hierarchy.
But let me ask you this: How good of a research tactic is it to reduce your entire being...your past, present, future expectations, mannerisms, flaws, merits...everything that makes you unique into a single abstract number?
Does doing so with a hundred such people actually make for better research?
It is imperative never to forget that Quantitative studies can be just as flawed as Qualitative ones that give significant weightage to capturing the voice/opinion/input of each participating individual.
Understanding the people participating in our research studies is just as important as viewing the numbers that are derived from them.
Studies worked on numbers may be devoid of distractions, but some of those distractions may also carry contextual meanings that are important especially when these studies are intended to be applied to people.
Research, whether qualitative or quantitative is a heavy subject that must be viewed with a carefully structured balance between the two approaches.