By documentation and content analysis, this paper examines the basic characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms used in education. This report also briefly presents a comparison between two of these paradigms in terms of assumption, purpose, approach, research role, procedure and data collection methods. | JOURNAL OF SCIENCE OF HNUE 2011 Vol. 56 N . 1 pp. 149-156 QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN EDUCATION Pham Thi Ben Hanoi National University of Education E-mail phamben2002@ Abstract. By documentation and content analysis this paper examines the basic characteristics of quantitative and qualitative research paradigms used in education. This report also briefly presents a comparison between two of these paradigms in terms of assumption purpose approach research role procedure and data collection methods. Keywords Quantitative qualitative educational research methods 1. Introduction Although education is called applied science 3 69 the paradigms used and the aims of research in education are the same as those of research in science gen- erally. There are five objectives of educational research exploration which is done when researchers are trying to generate ideas about something description is done to describe the characteristics of something or some phenomenon explanation to show how and why a phenomenon operates as it does prediction objective accu- rate predictions and the last objective is influence which involves the application of research results to impact the world to demonstrate 1 . Moreover education is a practical activity. The purpose of which is to change those being educated in some desirable ways so that educational research can simply transform educational problems into a series of theoretical problems which seriously distorts the purpose of the whole enterprise. There are three currently major re- search paradigms in education and in the social and behavioral sciences quanti- tative qualitative and mixed research 1 . This report focuses on two paradigms in education which are discussed widely in the literature and have roots in 20th-century philosophical thinking 4 1 quantitative and qualitative paradigms. Qualitative and quantitative so-called polar opposites paradigms 2 have philo- sophical roots in the naturalistic and the .
