The difference between qualitative and quantitative evidence
Launch library · evergreen read
Quantitative evidence measures things in numbers: how many, how often, how much of something occurred. Qualitative evidence captures depth and texture through interviews, observation or open ended accounts, explaining not just what is happening but how it is experienced by the people directly involved in it, a texture that numbers alone rarely manage to convey.
Each has real limits on its own, worth keeping in mind. Quantitative evidence can show a pattern without explaining why it exists in the first place, while qualitative evidence can explain a lived experience richly without revealing how widespread that experience actually is across a broader population, a gap that quantitative evidence is generally far better placed to fill.
Combining both tends to produce a fuller picture than either alone could manage, letting numbers establish scale while personal accounts explain meaning, which is why many well designed pieces of research and many well built campaigns draw carefully on both kinds of evidence together, side by side.