Graduate Research Portal

Quantitative Approaches

If your research will involve considerable amounts of statistical computation, quantitative approaches are likely required.

The following titles in the Library's collections provide guidance on using quantitative research methods.

General Guides:

• An introduction to secondary data analysis with IBM SPSS statistics (2017)
• Oxford handbook of quantitative methods (2013)
• The philosophy of quantitative methods (2018)
• Quantitative and statistical research methods: From hypothesis to results (2012)
• Quantitative methods for the social sciences: A practical introduction with examples in SPSS and Stata (2019)
• Sage quantitative research methods (2011)

Discipline-Specific Guides:

• Analysing quantitative data: For business and management students (2015)
• Data analysis techniques for physical scientists (2017)
• Feminism counts: Quantitative methods and researching gender (2012)
• Indigenous statistics: A quantitative research methodology (2013)
• Quantitative methods for health research: A practical interactive guide to epidemiology and statistics (2018)
• Quantitative research methods for social work: Making social work count (2017)
• Quantitative methods in tourism: A handbook (2011)
• Quantitative research in education: A primer (2010)
• Quantitative research in linguistics: An introduction (2013)
• Routledge international handbook of advanced quantitative methods in nursing research  (2016)

Qualitative Approaches

If your research aims to understand meanings, beliefs and experience, you may wish to consider qualitative research methods. Titles in the Library's collections on qualitative research approaches include the following:

Focus Groups or Group Discussions

• Basic and advanced focus groups (2019)
• Focus groups: A practical guide for applied research (2015)
• Handbook for focus group research (1998)
• International focus group research: A Handbook for the health and social sciences (2007)
• A new era in focus group research: Challenges, innovation and practice (2017)

Individual Interviews

• Doing interviews (2018)
• Interviews in qualitative research (2019)
• Online interviews in real time (2015)
• Oxford handbook of oral history (2011)
• Qualitative online interviews: Strategies, design, and skills (2015)
• Sage handbook of interview research (2012)

Participation or Observation

• Anthropologists in the field: Cases in participant observation (2004)
• Covert research: the art, politics and ethics of undercover fieldwork (2017)
• Ethnographic methods (2012)
• Fieldwork (2005)
• Participant observation: A guide for fieldworkers (2002)
• Participatory visual methodologies: Social change, community and policy (2017)

Conversation and Discourse Analysis

• Applied conversation analysis:Intervention and change in institutional talk (2011)
• Contemporary studies in conversation analysis (2013)
• Conversation Analysis and Discourse Analysis: A Comparative and Critical Introduction (2005)
• Doing conversation analysis (2007)
• Gender talk: Feminism, discourse, and conversation analysis (2005)