Understanding Business Research Terms and Concepts: Part 2
Justin Wilson
RES 351 Business Research
31 Mar 2015
Biman Ghosh

Descriptive statistics is the term given to the analysis of data that helps describe, show or summarize data in a meaningful way such that, for example, patterns might emerge from the data. Descriptive statistics do not, however, allow us to make conclusions beyond the data we have analysed or reach conclusions regarding any hypotheses we might have made. They are simply a way to describe our data.
Descriptive statistics are very important because if we simply presented our raw data it would be hard to visulize what the data was showing, especially if there was a lot of it. Descriptive statistics
Properties of samples, such as the mean or standard deviation, are not called parameters, but statistics. Inferential statistics are techniques that allow us to use these samples to make generalizations about the populations from which the samples were drawn. It is, therefore, important that the sample accurately represents the population. The process of achieving this is called sampling (sampling strategies are discussed in detail here on our sister site). Inferential statistics arise out of the fact that sampling naturally incurs sampling error and thus a sample is not expected to perfectly represent the population. The methods of inferential statistics are (1) the estimation of parameter(s) and (2) testing of statistical hypotheses.
Below is an understanding on how business research Qualitative vs. Quantitative analysis is conducting and evaluating the differences between the two. By using the Qualitative method it’s used as Design is generally based on a social constructivism perspective. Research problems become research questions based on prior research experience. Sample sizes can be as small as one.
Data collection involves interview, observation, and/or archival (content) data. The simplest way to define qualitative research is to note that the results are primarily expressed with words (as opposed to quantitative research in which results are primarily expressed with numbers). For example, Wixon, Pietras, Huntwork, and Muzzey describe