[pacbard]

If you want to take this a step further, quantitative methods are about efficient data reduction. As part of this data reduction, the model’s assumptions and mathematical form take center stage in describing how you got to your “number”.

This is different from qualitative analysis because the data reduction is done “by hand” by the researcher.

The difference between the “automatic”, model-based data reduction in quantitative research and the “subjective” reduction in qualitative research is then amplified when people say that quant is more objective than qual analysis. The discussion, instead, should be about the quality of the work and whether the final conclusions are warranted by the methods instead of the method itself.

[cqqxo4zV46cp]

Yep. There’s unfortunately a large contingent of people, usually the people that haven’t conducted quantitative research themselves, but have maybe read some, that are just impressed by numbers. It’s like the next level up from people that say “science says that …”.

[pavlov]

It’s the “data doesn’t lie” people.

They believe themselves to be objectively data-driven but don’t see the forest because they’re so busy looking at the trees they are shown.

[rscho]

It's far worse than that. People using numbers as supportive arguments often generated said numbers themselves, from scratch (meaning, they also collected the data). I'm currently redoing a study from an old prof. The old study was of a more trusted design, and found a massively positive effect. The new study (including old data) has an effect firmly grounded on zero. Those people aren't even always dishonest. They're just incompetent.