Quantitative and Qualitative Research: Perceptual Foundations

The way in which quantitative research and qualitative research are conventionally contrasted with each other runs along familiar lines – the former is seen as offering 'hard', 'factual' data, while the latter is depicted as softer, as providing deeper insight, but at the expense of being necessarily more 'interpretivist' and 'subjective' in its approach. Seldom is it recognised that this way of distinguishing the two methodologies is, in fact, rooted in our quantitatively determined beliefs about human experience. This paper aims to uncover these assumptions and to identify how they are rooted in our underlying preconceptions about the perceptual process itself. It outlines a new platform upon which the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research can be established and which links the latter with semiotics.