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I want to know some of the discerning factors of a product that makes you choose quantitative over qualitative research and vise versa at any given time during a project.?

Please elaborate when and why you choose one over the other.

When does one give more pertinent information than the other? What makes it take priority?

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Qualitative research is good to use at the beginning stages of product development (Interviews i.e.) because you want to gain insights in pain points from the user, that your product can ideally solve. Its also often used after prototyping or design part and prior to development, when you want to test overall design of the product. Quantiative on the other hand you can use to test specific elements of a product and to get exact data. It can be used as follow up to Interviews to get exact numbers and confirm on what to focus on in product development. It can be also used after product is designed / developed, to test and improve performance of specific features.

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  • Thanks @xul. Do you have any specific examples?
    – jeancode
    Mar 10, 2020 at 2:21
  • You want to build an sport events app. First questions for you are why and how users will use your app. You want to know what functionalities you need, and what to place on screen in your designs. In this very begining Qualitative methods with open ended questions, in form of Interviews are good for you. You get insight into peoples habbits, and they give you ideas on what to develop.
    – xul
    Mar 10, 2020 at 12:48
  • You have finished first version of website design, you have clickable protoype. It makes no sense for you to test it against measurments Quantitative, than you want to check general design. You want to check do people find menu, search and all important elements on your site, as also how they feel about your site. You go again with Qualitative, open ended questions. You gain insights in what they think about your site, and are they able to find eveything that is important.
    – xul
    Mar 10, 2020 at 12:50
  • You have finished you sport mobile app, you want to test if people really can find events that they want, and join them. You do Quantitative measurment for task sucess or time needed. You test how much time people need in your app to join one event. You have exact number, and you iterate your design to be better to reduce that time needed number. You can also test are they able to use filter, and you get number for task sucess rate. You iterate your design to increase that number.
    – xul
    Mar 10, 2020 at 12:53
  • Qualitative is all about gaining general insight, with open ended questions. Input you receive is often in written form, without exact number. Qualitative you receive exact numbers, you test on scales from 1 to 5 or 10. Therefore Quantitative is better to use in specific context, in smaller scopes. I.e. after development, to test performance of your search field, filter or other element.
    – xul
    Mar 10, 2020 at 12:55
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The qualitative

  • When you would like to discover new things and understand user behaviour because in this method the user is free to talk anything about the subject;
  • You just manage the time and point some subjects to be discussed not influence the user's answer.
  • You need more time to analyse the result because is not standardized;
  • You probably will not create charts with the answers;
  • You will need more time of the users to make the research because this is similar to an interview and you could do it in group fac-to-face.

The quantitative

  • When you would like to confirm some theory because in this method you will lead the users to limited answer options.
  • The result can be graphics and not so deep in user behaviour.
  • Take less time by the users and you can conclude it in a few minutes.
  • You have a lot of online tools that you can use to help you to have a lot of answers.

I could write hundreds of reasons to use each one and spend a lot of time explaining all the conditionals that you have in each situation but you can easily search on Google or Youtube by "Quantitative vs Qualitative Research" and invest some hours reading and watching videos. I just bring a brief about it.

I found this image with a basic and fair comparison: enter image description here

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I want to know some of the discerning factors of a product that makes you choose quantitative over qualitative research and vise versa at any given time during a project.?

This is tricky because at different times during a project for a product you might have a preference for a certain type of information/data. I general I wouldn't choose one over the other (as I try to use a bit of both, no matter how

Please elaborate when and why you choose one over the other.

When does one give more pertinent information than the other? What makes it take priority?

Improve this answer

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