A quantitative research would be mainly concerned with A. measurement B.…

Concept. Research traditions are told apart by the concerns that organise them. In the standard methodological account (Alan Bryman, Social Research Methods), quantitative research is built around four preoccupations:

• measurement — turning a concept into a variable that carries numerical values, so cases can be compared and correlated;

• causality — explaining an outcome by relating an independent variable to a dependent one;

• generalisation — extending a finding from the studied sample to a wider population;

• replication — recording procedure explicitly enough that another researcher can repeat the study and obtain the same result.

The qualitative tradition is organised around a different set of concerns:

• seeing the world through the participants’ own eyes;

• description and context;

• process, as things unfold over time;

• flexibility of design;

• concepts and theory built up from the data itself.

Application. Test each of the four items named in the question against that scheme.

Result. Three of the four listed items — measurement, causality and replication — are quantitative preoccupations, so the grouping that reads “A, B and D Only” is the accepted answer.

Cross-check. Context is the item that does not belong. Sensitivity to the specific setting, and to meaning as participants themselves understand it, is precisely what qualitative work is prized for; a quantitative design deliberately strips context away in the interest of standardisation and comparability. Replication is also not the same thing as generalisation, the fourth quantitative preoccupation: