Qualitative vs Quantitative Data

There are two types of data quantitative and qualitative. As the word tells, quantitative is about a number such as 5, 8, or 12, numerical data is quantitative data. There are two types of numerical data discrete and continuous data. Discrete data is based on counting while continuous data is based on measurement. A whole number is assigned to discrete data and a real number is assigned to continuous data. Counting the number of cats will be discrete data while measuring the distance from one point to another will be continuous data. Both continuous and discrete data are quantitative data because both are numerical. The difference is observed by counting while the other is measured. 

Now we will come to qualitative data. Qualitative data is based on observation and you use words to describe this data not numbers.

Qualitative data is basically descriptive data based on observation and words to describe the data not numbers and this is the key difference between quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitate data is expressed numerically while qualitative data used words to record the information. Qualitative data usually involves the five senses, it can be visual like what we see such as color, it can be what we feel like soft or hard, it could be what we taste good or bad, or what we hear high or low volume. These are different forms of qualitative data and as we can see we used words to describe it.

 

 

Let's do some more examples to understand quantitative and qualitative data. If we say that we have 7 dogs then we are dealing with discrete quantitative data as we count the numbers of dogs and whole numbers will be used to record our observation we can not say that we have 7.5 dogs, we will have either 7 dogs or 8 dogs using whole numbers for counting not continuous numbers. Let's say if we say the cat's fur is black then we are dealing with qualitative data here as we are using our visual senses and describing our observation in words. If we say Michael is 6.1 feet tall we are dealing with continuous quantitative data, we measure the height and then use continuous data to record our observation. It can be in whole numbers like 5 feet height, 3kg rice, or decimals like 3.5 kg rice so we will use Real numbers to express the continuous data, which take both whole numbers as well as decimals.