Understanding Research Terms and Concepts

This paper will look at two different articles, one that used qualitative and one that used quantitative research methods.. This paper will determine the strengths and weaknesses of each method and how they can be used most effectively together. The paper will also be discussing which method would be more appropriate in my own business or functional area.

The first article employs the Qualitative research method, which can be done by using various methods such as surveys and observations. This article is regarding cervical cancer screening. The research was aimed at finding out what influences women of African American decent to have regular screenings to test for cervical cancer. The researchers used data from Community programs and a group of twenty-four African American women between ages 19-60, and face-to-face interviews to conduct their research. Next we will discuss a quantitative research article.

The second article uses the quantitative research method. The article is regarding the retention of nontraditional students. Retention of nontraditional students has become an issue for many institutions. The study was aimed at investigating, describing and measuring factors influencing retention.

The article that I have been using in my previous papers employs a mixture of qualitative and quantitative research methods. The quantitative research was obtained using the TRAC system information, which is a database where the IRS stores fiscal year information. The qualitative information comes in the form of surveys of managers at corporations. Incorporating the two methods you are mixing fact-based information from the TRAC system and subjective information from surveys. When putting the two methods together they give you a clearer picture of the issue being researched.

Qualitative research can require individual who is an expert in certain areas of observation, such as in the study of linguistics. Sometimes it can be hard to find