Iti Fatimah Bahari 2010: Qualitative versus quantitative research strategies: Contrasting epistemological and ontological assumptions.

Provide a critique on the article on the major assumptions, strengths and weakness of each strategy and applicability in security research

Abstract

Despite variances and convergences about key areas of research philosophy, in this work, Iti Fatima Bahari labours to make readers understand more of qualitative and quantitative researches. The study evaluates among other issues, the truism that qualitative research strategy is also referred to as intensive research whereas quantitative can be as well termed as extensive strategy research. Fatima does not end her argument at this stage, instead going further to suggest that these methodology strategies differ by contrasting epistemological and ontological aspects. Epistemology in research is about how we know what we know. This study in undertaking article review provides a critique on major research areas and associates these to security research. It is concluded that the two research approaches are useful to and can be applied in security research as in other studies to obtain specific cultural information about the values, opinions, behaviors, and social contexts; and the utilization and analysis of numerical data using specific statistical techniques to answer questions like who, how much, what, where, when, how many, and how for qualitative and quantitative strategies respectively.