Quantitative methodology is the dominant research framework in the social sciences. It refers to a set of strategies, techniques, and assumptions used to study psychological, social, and economic processes through the exploration of numeric patterns.

• Quantitative research gathers a range of numeric data. Some of the numeric data is intrinsically quantitative (e.g. personal income), while in other cases the numeric structure is imposed (e.g. ‘On a scale from 1 to 10, how depressed did you feel last week?’).
• The collection of quantitative information allows researchers to conduct simple to extremely sophisticated statistical analyses that aggregate the data (e.g. averages, percentages), show relationships among the data (e.g. ‘Students with lower grade point averages tend to score lower on a depression scale’) or compare across aggregated data (e.g. the USA has a higher gross domestic product than Spain).
• Quantitative research includes methodologies such as questionnaires, structured observations, or experiments and stands in contrast to qualitative research. Qualitative research involves the collection and analysis of narratives and/or open-ended observations through methodologies such as interviews, focus groups, or ethnographies.

Source: The SAGE encyclopedia of action research (Vols. 1-2). London, : SAGE Publications Ltd doi: 10.4135/9781446294406

The purpose of quantitative research is to generate knowledge and create an understanding of the social world.

• Quantitative research is used by social scientists, including communication researchers, to observe phenomena or occurrences affecting individuals. Social scientists are concerned with the study of people.
• Quantitative research is a way to learn about a particular group of people, known as a sample population. Using scientific inquiry, quantitative research relies on data that are observed or measured to examine questions about the sample population.

Source: The SAGE encyclopedia of communication research methods;(Vols. 1-4). Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications, Inc doi: 10.4135/9781483381411<

Quantitative Research Designs: Descriptive non-experimental, Quasi-experimental, or Experimental?

• Studies do not always explicitly state what kind of research design is being used.  You will need to know how to decipher which design type is used. 

The following video will help you determine the quantitative design type.

This resource is adapted from the UTA Libraries, Quantitative and Qualitative Research Guide.
Thank you to them for sharing their content, which may be reused and adapted under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license.