About the lecture

In this lecture, we differentiate quantitative and qualitative research, focusing in particular on: (i) the typical distinction between quantitative and qualitative researchers; (ii) understanding quantitative research to be focused on numbers and instances, which can be used to show how common an event is and to find causal/correlational links between events; (iii) a survey as an example of a quantitative method, the national census being an example of this; (iv) examples of using incidence counting in quantitative methods; (v) a focus of qualitative data being the experiences of people in a given study; (vi) the nature of qualitative research being more time consuming and resource intensive meaning that qualitative research study samples are typically far smaller than quantitative study samples; (vii) qualitative data sources beyond people themselves, including media presentations; (viii) the assumption of qualitative research, that the researcher plays a role in the outcome of the study; (ix) mixed methods as a technique used to incorporate the strengths of both approaches.

About the lecturer

Dr Rosie Nelson is a lecturer in gender in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies at the University of Bristol. Dr Nelson’s research interests are in LGBTQ+ sexualities, trans and non-binary identities. Some of Dr Nelson’s recent publications include ‘What do bisexuals look like? I don’t know!’ (2020) and ‘Questioning identities/shifting identities’ (2020).