Quantitative And Qualitative Research Strategies

According to Bryman and Bell (2015), a research strategy is “a general orientation to the conduct of business research” (p. 37). Researchers distinguish between a qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research. While qualitative research focuses on understanding texts and words and usually applies an inductive approach, quantitative data aims at measuring numerical and statistical data and typically follows a deductive approach (Bryman & Bell, 2015, pp. 37–38). A mixed methods research combines qualitative and quantitative research strategy, where either one of the two strategies is prioritised over the other or have the same status (Bryman & Bell, 2015, pp. 643–645).

The “[r]esearch designs are types of inquiry within qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches that provide specific direction for procedures in a research design” (Creswell, 2014, p. 12). Following Bryman (2012, p. 45), the literature differentiates between the five research designs: experimental, cross-sectional, longitudinal, case study, and comparative.

“[A] research method or research methods are needed to collect data” (Bryman, 2012, p. 46). Examples for research methods are content analysis, focus groups, structured interviews, self-completion

Contrary to unstructured interviews, structured interviews are inflexible as each interviewee receives the same questions, which are arranged in a pre-set order (Miles & Gilbert, 2005, p. 65). Semi-structured interviews are kind of a mixed of the first two types; “This form of interviewing has some degree of predetermined order but still ensures flexibility in the way issues are addressed by the informant.” (Dunn 2005, p. 80, as cited in Longhurst, 2010, p. 105). Due to combining the advantages of structured and unstructured interviews, this thesis will apply a semi-structured interview