Narrative Inquiry --
Different from storytelling because it goes into depth on the audience and narrator.
Qualitative research --
interpretive natural approach to research, studying things in natural settings
"understanding"
Quantitative research --
numbers, facts, control of why
Narrative researchers use story telling in their approach to research. I do this a lot. I still to this day get told to start placing more facts and quotes into my research pieces because I begin to tell a story with my research. I usually lean towards more of the overall understanding of the piece given to me, rather than know the details of how it got to the place it is.
My feel of the piece is that both researches of qualitative and quantitative are correct in their own ways -- its just that they continuously have different approaches to research. When the qualitative researcher is collecting data, the researched is continuously analyzed and visible. There is no need to record and look back upon because there are less numbers than words.
This read was difficult because I felt it was a lot of talking about what they were going to talk about without really talking about it. I had to skim through it to go back and see if there was any clear definition of what it was they were talking about. The words were there that we needed to get a feel for, but they were talked about more than they were touched upon. I had to try to interpret the research on my own because I felt that it wasn't clearly stated. Hope I was correct.
Source: “Situating Narrative Inquiry”: http://www.sagepub.com/upm-data/13548_Chapter1.pdf
Expansion:
Earlier I stated how there is no need to "record and look back upon" in qualitative research. This is because of the narrative perspective of recording on the subjective level. There is less need for the direct or any need for objectivity. The narrative plays a more particular, able to be seen, role in research. Qualitative research is the moving away from the numbers of research and into the data. Numbers limit the researcher to what can be counted -- numbers are endless, the counting stops somewhere. But if we do research on the more individual rather than on the grander scale of things, we are able to make more individualized data based on what we have seen in a smaller scale rather than an "overall" type generalization. (That was a a long run on sentence that I'd rather not go back and rewrite). I feel that Qualitative research fits me better than the quantitative.
** I also feel that seeing the words quantitative and qualitative make me confused and get a headache right behind my eyes. Not because of the information -- but because they look so darn similar I keep writing the wrong one & have to go back to redo it. So, if I put one instead of the other, forgive me. I'm sorry.