SOAN 3070 Chapter 1: QUiz 1 Readings

• School: University of Guelph
• Department: Sociology and Anthropology
• Course: SOAN 3070
• Professor: Anna Borisenkova

Document Summary

Qualitati(cid:448)e (cid:373)ate(cid:396)ials e(cid:454)pe(cid:396)ie(cid:374)(cid:272)ed a (cid:396)e(cid:448)i(cid:448)al of so(cid:396)ts th(cid:396)oughout the late (cid:1005)(cid:1013)(cid:1012)(cid:1004)(cid:859)s a(cid:374)d (cid:1005)(cid:1013)(cid:1013)(cid:1004)(cid:859)s. Today a growing number of texts examine various aspects of qualitative research- even books once nearly exclusively associated with quantitative research. The notion of quality is essential to the nature of things. Quantity is elementally an amount of something. Quality refers to the what, how, when, where and why of things- its essence and ambience. Qualitative research refers to the meanings, concepts, definitions, characteristics, metaphors, symbols, and descriptions of things. Quantitative research refers to counts and measures of things, the extents and distributions of our subject matter. Certain experiences cannot be meaningfully expressed by numbers. The meanings that we give to events and things come from their qualities, to understand our lives we need qualitative research. We can study and measure qualities as collections of meanings, as a spectrum of states of being, but not as precise and solid objects.