Inductive Manner or a Deductive Manner. Quantitative

¶ … inductive manner or a deductive manner. Quantitative research is deductive and is conducted according to a hypothesis that has been generated from a review of the literature in the field of study. Qualitative research, on the other hand, is an inductive process that does not use a hypothesis to guide the inquiry. Making a choice between the two research methods is largely determined by the research questions that have been generated by the researcher and by data collection feasibility constraints. Put simply, quantitative research emphasizes theory testing, while qualitative research takes a theory building approach.

Quantitative research methods. A hypothesis is a tentative assumption about a relationship between two or more variables. It is stated as a question that the research is designed to answer. Quantitative research is constructed on the basis of two hypothesis statements in order to use statistical processes to determine relationships among variables. A null hypothesis, which is represented by Ho, is not expected to be true. Accepting the null hypothesis on the basis of statistical analysis of the data means that the hypothesis could not be supported by the research. The alternative hypothesis, represented by Ha, is assumed to represent a true relationship between variables. If the null hypothesis is rejected, it suggests that the alternative hypothesis may be true -- this is the situation that the researcher would like to have happen. However, there is always a small chance that an error has occurred in the sampling procedures, data collection, or data analysis that will make the alternative hypothesis not true according to scientific standards. The process of confirming a hypothesis is referred to by researchers as testing the hypothesis, but the process is never absolute.

Quantitative research confirms a theory by examining the general case and moving toward the specific hypothesis associated with the study in the discipline (Shuttleworth, 2011). In using this deductive approach to quantitative research, a potential cause of something (some effect) is assumed and the research is designed to verify the relationship between the cause and the effect. In the process of carrying out quantitative research, the strength of the relationship between two or more variables is examined through statistical procedures. When a very strong relationship exists between variables, a highly probable relationship is said to exist. Within every quantitative study, it is always possible to conclude that the effect is not a result of the "cause" but this is not considered very likely when the relationship between the variables is very strong.

Types of quantitative research designs include experimental/quasi-experimental, case-study, longitudinal, cross-sectional.