QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN EDUCATIONAL PRACTICE

Abstract

The aim of this study was to see whether we can use qualitative analysis of data collected with quantitative method to determine the reasons for violent behavior among children. The quantitative part of the research was conducted on a sample of N = 51 participants, first-grade students of elementary school "Ivan Goran Kovaĉić" Gradaĉac. For the purposes of gathering quantitative data we used Aggression Questionnaire (Buss and Perry, 1992), and for the qualitative part, semi-structured interview that was based on Aggression Questionnaire. The qualitative part of the study was conducted on five participants with a minimum, and five participants with maximum score on Aggression Questionnaire. The method we used for qualitative data processing is called "Framework analysis". Quantitative analysis provides us with insight into the prominence of aggressive behaviors among children, and differences between four dimensions of Aggression Questionnaire. Qualitative data processing gives us a deeper insight into the differences between the participants with the minimum and maximum score on the Aggression Questionnaire and the differences among the participants at the individual level. Although there are differences that are obtained by quantitative method, qualitative analysis shows that there are a lot of characteristics shared by both groups of participants. It is shown that the two groups of respondents are mainly differing in the expression of aggressive behavior but their perceptions, emotions and cognition are quite similar.