Question

Qualitative research generally involves a smaller sample size than quantitative data. Why is this the case?

Answer 1

Qualitative research involves smaller sample size than quantitative research as data in such studies is collected in a much more in-depth fashion. Qualitative data includes interview transcripts, focus group discussions, narratives, written content, observations etc which are very time consuming to analyse and are not amenable to immediate interpretation. On the other hand, quantitative research works with numerical data which can be interpreted using statistical measures. The robustness of these measures, to some extent, depend on how large the sample size is. This researchers in this case are driven to increase the sample size in their study.