Q: What kind of research method should I use for my thesis: qualitative or quantitative?
I am working on my final thesis and my topic is "Prospective of youth participation in agriculture."
It is very important to choose the right research methodology and methods for your thesis, as your research is the base that your entire thesis will rest on. It will be difficult for me to choose a research method for you. You will be the best judge of the kind of methods that work for your research. However, I can guide you on how you can choose an appropriate study design and research methodology for your topic.
Once you have your research objectives clearly framed, you need to think of an appropriate study design and methodology to conduct your research. You will first have to choose whether you wish to use quantitative or qualitative research methods.
Quantitative research involves experiments, surveys, testing, and structured content analysis, interviews, and observation. Additionally, the results of quantitative studies are derived using statistical, mathematical, or computational techniques. Quantitative research designs can be descriptive, correlational, quasi-experimental or experimental.
Qualitative research methods include participant observation, interviews, focus-group discussions, and content analysis. The types of data generated by these methods can be in the form of field notes, audio/video recordings, transcripts, etc.
Note that quantitative methods are more suitable for close-ended research questions where the objective is to quantify variations and causal relationships, while qualitative methods are more appropriate for open-ended questions where the objective is to describe individual experiences and relationships or group norms.
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