Quantitative research was originally used as an approach to studying the natural sciences. Quantitative research focuses on quantifiable data and conclusions. In other words, numerical data and measurements are used in order to draw numerical conclusions from the research. This approach lends itself particularly well to the natural sciences and numerical disciplines, as exact measurements are required for these. Natural scientific language is used for the expression of facts in numerical terms. These digits should be universally accepted in the scientific research environment, which means that its function should also be unchanged. Such language is then to provide research facts via an explanation of the statistical truth (Hara, 1995). Furthermore, the researcher's value judgments are not to be imposed upon the conclusions drawn from the data. The researcher is viewed as an objective observer. While most appropriate for natural scientific research, quantitative research has also increasingly been used in social sciences in order to draw logical conclusions from existing facts.
             Being a social science, education has generally been studied by qualitative methods. The reason for this is that human beings are not an exact science, and facts have to be derived by an inductive rather than a deductive approach. The best practice could, therefore, best be determined by making value judgments rather than drawing quantitative conclusions. It has however been recognized that the social sciences can also be studied from an objective rather than subjective viewpoint. According to Hara, quantitative research can be used in education in order to discover existing facts by means of isolating human reality from the researcher's subjectivity. The data obtained in this way can then be presented in a numerical, objective way, in order to derive universally applicable conclusions. The value of such research is that it exists independently from value...