While human emotions and perspectives from both subjects and researchers are considered undesirable biases confounding results in quantitative research, the same elements are considered essential and inevitable, if not treasurable, in qualitative research as they invariable add extra dimensions and colors to enrich the corpus of findings. Unlike quantitative research which deals primarily with numerical data and their statistical interpretations under a reductionist, logical and strictly objective paradigm, qualitative research handles nonnumerical information and their phenomenological interpretation, which inextricably tie in with human senses and subjectivity.
Like quantitative research, the qualitative research aims to seek answers for questions of “how, where, when who and why” with a perspective to build a theory or refute an existing theory. The essence of qualitative research is to make sense of and recognize patterns among words in order to build up a meaningful picture without compromising its richness and dimensionality. Nature of Qualitative Research versus Quantitative Research