Quantitative and qualitative methods have different purposes. Quantitative research methods try to quantify a phenomenon, so we can make predictions. Qualitative methods try to describe and understand the phenomenon. Further, each method produces a different kind of data. This exercise is designed for you to obtain both, quantitative and qualitative data about the same issue and be able to compare and contrast both sets of data.

Quantitative Data Collection

What would be the best multiple-choice question to ask about the ice cream preference of the person you are interviewing? Provide four choices to the multiple-choice question. Ask this question to the person you are interviewing and circle the answer of the person.

Qualitative Data Collection

What would be the best open-ended question to investigate the ice cream preference of the person you are interviewing? THIS QUESTION IS NOT A FOLLOW-UP QUESTION TO THE QUESTION ABOVE. An open-ended question is a question that cannot be answered with a "yes" or "no", a word or phrase, or a number. For example, "Tell me about your family". You may also want to write down a couple of probe questions such as, "tell me more about that" or "what else?". Probes are used to explore further something the interviewee said because it is interesting or because the person provided limited information about it.

Response:

1. Probes:

Probe Response:

1. Imagine you are using your quantitative questions in a survey a couple hundred people will take. In a sentence or two, tell me what kind of conclusions you think could be drawn from the answers of a couple of hundred people to your question?

1. Imagine you interview a couple dozen people with your qualitative question. In a sentence or two, tell me what kind of conclusions you think could be drawn from their answers?

1. In a sentence or two, tell me how you would have written the quantitative question differently based on the response of the qualitative question?