Qualitative and Quantitative Research Approaches
The tools in the approach are in the form of post-research activities to be more convincing by repeating the examination of the data, asking objective questions to experts, definite relationships, repetitive belief patterns, and so on.
Report Writing Aspects
The quantitative approach of writing reports according to a fixed formal chart, content that is fixed, complete and is the result of reports and test results with calculations from empirical research fields. A qualitative approach to writing reports according to the author's logic in the order of the reports. Content is not according to a fixed formality, but in the form of a series of stories that can be accounted for by researchers, consisting of stories with writing that may overlap but are meaningful.
Some of the explanations above show the differences in quantitative and qualitative approaches that seem very real, both in terms of paradigmatic, basic views as well as in terms of aspects and methodology.
There are several names given to qualitative research, depending on what type and field the method is used. Anthropologists call ethnography the qualitative method or approach they use. Sometimes sociologists call it by the name of participatory observation, and in the field of psychology it is called qualitative approach (Sanapiah, 1993).
In line with its varied names, definitions given in qualitative research also vary even though there are similarities in principle. Connole, et al. (1993) provides a limitation that qualitative research is research that focuses on the activities of identifying, documenting, and knowing with in-depth interpretation of the phenomena of values, meanings, beliefs, roles, and general characteristics of a person or group of people about events life.
Meanwhile, Bogdan and Taylor (in Moleong, 1994) define qualitative methodology as a research procedure that produces descriptive data in the form of people's written or oral words and observable behavior. Bogdan and Taylor further explained that this approach was directed at the background and the individual holistically (whole). So, in this case may not isolate individuals or organizations into changes or hypotheses, but need to see it as part of a wholeness.
In line with Bogdan and Taylor, Kirk and Miller (in Moleong, 1994) define that qualitative research is a particular tradition in social science that fundamentally depends on experience in humans in their own region. Furthermore Sanapiah (1993) explains that qualitative research is a research methodology which includes philosophical views of disciplined inquiry about the reality of the objects studied in social sciences and behavior.
There are five characteristics of qualitative research, namely:
Qualitative research has a natural setting as a source of direct data, and researchers as instruments
Qualitative research is descriptive research. Data collected is more words or images than numbers
Qualitative research pays more attention to process than product. This is caused by the way researchers collect and interpret data, settings or relationships between the parts being studied will be much clearer if observed in
Qualitative researchers try to analyze data inductively: Researchers do not look for data to prove the hypotheses they have compiled before starting the research, but to arrange
Qualitative research focuses on meaning rather than behavior