Quantity and Quality in Research

One can think of several cases in which the distinctive feature that separates the scientific from the nonscientific is quantifica­tion, which means expressing laws or relations in terms of quanti­ties combined with qualities rather than by qualities alone. To mention that New York city is full of criminals is a nonscientific expression in contrast to providing the data about how many criminals, decided by such and such criteria, are in the custody of the New York City Police Department. In the latter case, two items render the statement scientific:

1. The criteria needed to decide how to identify the criminals
2. The enumeration of those who fulfill such criteria

The first of these is a matter of definition (see Chapter 2); the second, namely, the enumeration involved, is a matter of quanti­fication. Even in terms of our previous discussion relative to the function of science, we may think of the relation between those identified as criminals and the number of those who constitute such a group as a law. In such statements, which are quantitative and thereby can be claimed to be scientific, the relation is not between two events; it is between a certain defined quality and the number of those who have such quality. In such statements, there is need for a definition and to count those entities that ful­fill that definition. There is no room left to make arbitrary, biased, and unconfirmed statements. If it is one’s hypothesis to brand New York as a place full of criminals, the hypothesis needs to be confirmed by experimentation, in this case done by check­ing the definition of “criminal” and further by enumeration of the criminals. The process of enumeration, better known as counting, is done by means of numbers.

Source: Srinagesh K (2005), The Principles of Experimental Research, Butterworth-Heinemann; 1st edition.