Research types
What types of research there are and the difference between them
Last updated
What types of research there are and the difference between them
Last updated
Research is often divided into qualitative and quantitative research where, genrally speaking, quantitative research aims to understand what people are doing, while qualitative research wants to understand why. This of course is a generalisation and also not the only way of dividing research into different types.
Attitudinal vs behavioural is another way of defining research. Likewise with qualitative vs quantitative there are generalisations in the differences between the research types, but generally you could take the classic example of you shouldn't only research what people are saying, you need to research what people are doing. (Cliche, I know 💁♀️)
A misconception that I have encountered however is that research needs to be either of the four, like they're all opposites of each other. But this is simply not the case. I like to think of it as a two by two matrix as shown image "Research types" where qualitative vs quantitative is on one axis, and behavioural vs attitudinal is on one.
Research can therefore qualify in either of the four quadrants attitudinal - quantitative; attitudinal - qualitative; behavioural - qualitative; behavioural - quantitative. Add the depth of a research framework with the different levels of research to that and you can really start to defining what research you're doing and why you're doing it.
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This is probably the ost common way of speaking about and dividing research (as of today) and divides research based on how its' conducted and measured. If research is qualitative or quantitative is often said to be depending on what method you're using, but I would argue most methods can yield both qualitative and quantitative results, it all depends on how they are applied and how you ask questions.
Often done with a smaller number of people as it's more time consuming to perform, document, and analyse. Aims to understand the why to customers/users behaviours, their attitudes, motivators and opinions. Qualitative insights can come from many different research methods; e.g. the text book examples of interviews and contextual inquiry but methods like surveys can also yield qualitative insights, it all depends on the set-up of the survey and how you ask.
A rule of thumb to know if research is qualitative is that it's difficult to measure, e.g. when asking someone what the temperature is outside and they respond with "it's cold outside" 🌡 - that's a qualitative measure since it's their subjective opinion. However, if you were to measure how many people said it's cold outside you could get a quantitative metric of qualitative data.
Often to capture the attitudes and/or behaviours of a larger number of customers/users and most often performed with methods where respondents can be segmented based on behavioural or demographic characteristics and where results can be presented by numbers and graphs. Quantitative insights can come from different research methods, the standard example being surveys, but - as stated before - I believe most methods can yield both qualitative and quantitative research, it just depend on how you ask.
Another way to divide research is into attitudinal and behavioural research. The former focuses on understanding customers attitudes towards different subjects and products, and the later focusing on understanding the behaviour of customers.
This is about understanding customers, users, or peoples (either in general or for a specific segment) attitudes towards different subjects. It aims to understand what and how people think and we use it to research existing products as well as future, currently non-existing products. It can give us a sense of how attitudes differ within a population and how we might need to alter our strategy to attract a specific type of customer or user. It cal also be used to identify unmet needs that prove opportunities for the business.
I like to think of this as more being a detective 🕵️♀️ and looking at how people are actually doing things to uncover the real truth. It's combined with attitudinal research to get both sides of the coin - what people think and how people are acting.
Behavioural research is most often performed on an existing product, think statistics of behaviour, usability testing, A/B testing etc. but, it can also most certainly be used to discover unmet needs and opportunities. Observations, diary studies, and contextual inquiry are examples of methods that can be used to understand behaviours of people - in connection to or disconnected from a product - with the aim to identify needs and pains that we are not yet solving- i.e. are potential opportunities.