What is quantitative survey data?
Quantitative survey data has a number associated with it. Quantitative data can be as simple as the percent of people responding “Yes” or “No” to a specific question. However, one of the most valuable uses of quantitative survey data comes from questions that are scaled. A scaled question is a question that requires respondents to rate their experience using a number; for example, from one to six. Quantitative data permits an understanding of the magnitude of a response. Quantitative data can tell us, for example, the extent to which one political candidate is favored over another.
Quantitative survey data can also be used to explore relationships between attitudes and behaviors, and even enable predictions. For example, it is possible to use qualitative survey data to determine the likelihood or probability that a person will use a given product given their attitudes toward other products. This can be done using managed machine learning and linear regressions, which correlate independent variables (or questions) with dependent variables (or comprehensive ‘big picture’ questions). This can pinpoint the most important factors/issues. For this reason, this type of survey data is invaluable to employee survey research, customer survey research, and market research.