Your research will dictate the kinds of research methodologies you use to underpin your work and methods you use in order to collect data. If you wish to collect quantitative data you are probably measuring variables and verifying existing theories or hypotheses or questioning them. Data is often used to generate new hypotheses based on the results of data collected about different variables. One’s colleagues are often much happier about the ability to verify quantitative data as many people feel safe only with numbers and statistics.
However, often collections of statistics and number crunching are not the answer to understanding meanings, beliefs and experience, which are better understood through qualitative data. And quantitative data, it must be remembered, are also collected in accordance with certain research vehicles and underlying research questions. Even the production of numbers is guided by the kinds of questions asked of the subjects, so is essentially subjective, although it appears less so than qualitative research data.
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