A slightly serious question for a Friday. But it’s sure to give you enough food for thought for the weekend. Here’s Dr Bhaskar Das in the June 30 edition of Das ka Dum. Read on…
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Q. Google’s VP of marketing has said qualitative research in the current era is more important than it ever was. What’s your view?
A. Your question does not deserve a uni-dimensional answer. It is not a question of qualitative (quali) being more important than quantitative (quanti) or vice versa. It all depends on the research objectives. For instance, one could be testing hypothesis wherein statistically significant conclusions are more important and numbers are very critical. Also, when you want to study society and cultural patterns for ethnography of heterogenous consumer cohorts or where a new area of findings have to be explored, qualitative research comes very handy. In fact in today’s context, an overstress on data tends to skew findings with the assumption that the consumer is just an algo (algorithm) which is a not a reality. Many startups have already understood it (edtech specially) or some so-called unicorns. Hence, the objective of the research, resources available, questions that an organisation is skeeing an answer etc are critical variables before deciding with finality which approach is better. Ideally, a hybrid or a combination of quali and quanti may be useful depending again on what is an organisation is seeking to unravel.