A500.7.3.RB_TAYLORHEATHER

When it comes to research, I immediately find myself reflecting on days spent in sterile laboratories, assessing change through numerical evaluation tools.  Everything was provided a rating, a value, a score.  If it did not have a number, it was not of worth.  That was at least the mindset of those that funded the grant research.
Quantitative data lends itself to publication.  Qualitative research, while regarded by some to be of great value, did not produce the same financial results.  I find myself struggling to determine the worth of qualitative vs. quantitative research and challenge my current beliefs understanding that I am likely committing the fallacy of Appeal to the People and Appeal to the Past.
Since early childhood, I recall the experimental method.  This was a methodology that focused on controlling as many extraneous variables as possible to limit the unnatural and natural processes that may skew the final results.  The goal was creating the ultimate vacuum.  Bringing my mind back from a scene from the movie Spaceballs, I look upon this idea of historical quantitative research with irony.
To try to remove all of the natural factors that may impact the results is to create an unnatural process and one must ask themselves if they are really getting down to the nature of the research topic.  That being said, not all quantitative research is done in a laboratory with a white coat.  There were plenty of times where I conducted research while teaching students with intellectual disabilities.  I often provided observational analysis fby child psychologists.  Every instance where little Timmy or Jane would squirm in their seat or impulsively answer a question had to be charted, graphed and analyzed.  That environment was far from sterile!
Quantitative research is intended to find the "Why?" It is meant to get at the heart of a social phenomena and explain the occurrence with as little room as possible for the information to be refuted.  Perhaps that is why I find myself leaning more toward utilization of quantitative research vs. qualitative research.  Perhaps,it would be best for me to spend more time completing qualitative research to determine the worth, rather than continuing to hold a rigid view that only what can be counted counts.