The difference between qualitative and quantitative indicators
Launch library · evergreen read
Quantitative indicators express change in numbers: signatures gathered, attendance figures, survey scores recorded over time. Qualitative indicators capture change in richer, descriptive terms: how people talk about an issue, what they say has shifted in their own understanding or behaviour as a direct result of the campaign's work.
Quantitative indicators are easier to compare and summarise, while qualitative indicators often capture nuance and meaning that numbers alone cannot, particularly for change that is genuinely personal or contextual rather than something that reduces cleanly to a simple, tidy count on a spreadsheet somewhere, however useful that spreadsheet is for other purposes.
Using both together tends to produce a fuller, more trustworthy picture of change than relying on either alone, since numbers show scale while descriptive accounts show what that scale of change actually looks and feels like on the ground, for the real people directly involved in it, day to day and week to week.