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Quantitative research can be simply defined as research where the data collected is in the form of numbers, that is to say, where the data can be quantified (Punch 2009, Cohen et al. 2007). However, more broadly quantitative research is associated with (but not restricted to) a positivist view of reality. In this worldview, the application of the scientific method is said to warrant the findings of empirical research. The scientific method understood in this way is a set of standardized procedures that typically follows the stages of developing hypotheses, designing experiments, collecting data, analysing data for correlations and patterns; falsifying hypotheses based on conclusions and developing generalisations and new laws (Cohen et al. 2007). This sort of systematic collection of data, with careful controls and identification of variables, usually entails the use of particular methods such as surveys and experimental or quasi-experimental studies (Punch 2009).
Quantitative research will clearly be a very familiar and probably more intuitive research process for scientists who decide to engage in Physics Education Research, but it has its limitations when dealing with enquiry into human behaviours. There have been a number of criticisms of quantitative research, which can be summarised as the diminished picture it offers of human life in all its complexity. The scientific method itself has been shown to consist of many different ‘methods’, but the main criticisms of it are the way in which this approach to research tends towards a mechanistic and reductionist portrayal of nature and of the human mind (Cohen et al. 2007).
Focusing exclusively on variables to be controlled and measured is considered to produce a much impoverished understanding of the nature of reality, of the social world, of human relationships and their interactions in complex socio-historical and politically determined situations (Cohen et al. 2007). Quantitative research methods however, can provide relatively robust information on social realities, and are still powerful methods for educational research; so long as they are understood to capture and represent only part of that rich reality.
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