Quantitative Descriptive Studies

The purpose of quantitative descriptive studies is to find inter-relationships between variables. (Marketing implication: People who do x are likely to (also) do y.) These relationships, though, are not (necessarily) CAUSAL, so there’s still a qualitative design here. You can only hypothesize causal relations.

Case Studies and Ethnographies merely identify variables, but do not speak to how they co-relate.

Subject selection:

• n:k ratio should be 10:1 (ten subjects for each variable)

Need to have alternative hypotheses (theory triangulation) because they help explain more clearly what the findings are.  Also, because the statistical tests you run will need it. Chi-square is the test for correlation. Null hypothesis is that there is no relationship between the variables.

Variance – Must consider what accounts for the variance between variables. You will likely get stronger correlation among some of the variables than you will with others.