How does qualitative explain specific and different tendencies in quantitative findings?

Abstract

Theory suggests different strengths of quantitative research approaches, especially its generalizability. This paper, however, argues that generalizability sometimes can also become a limitation of the quantitative research design when the focus of a study is on how a certain issue immerges in a certain context, as quantitative methods often remove context and individual experience from the generalized findings. In this specific research on the universityenterprise collaboration (UEC) for enhancing graduate employability in Vietnam, qualitative interviews are used to compensate this deficit of quantitative questionnaires. Specifically, when universities and employers have different opinions about UEC, follow-up interviews help explain the disagreement between these two groups of participants. In other words, the qualitative findings of this study help answer the questions ‘how’ and ‘why’ certain tendencies immerged in the quantitative findings.