The fourth difference is the degree of abstraction or distance from the details of social life. In all data analysis, a researcher places raw data into categories that he or she manipulates in order to identify patterns and arrive at generalizations. In qualitative analysis, this process is clothed in statistics, hypotheses, and variables. Qualitative researchers use the symbolic language of statistical relationships between variables to discuss causal relations. They assume that social life can be measured by using numbers. When they manipulate the numbers according to the laws of statistics, the numbers reveal features of social life.
Qualitative analysis is less abstract than statistical analysis and closer to raw data. Qualitative analysis does not draw on a large, well-established body of formal knowledge from mathematics and statistics. The data are in the form of word, which are relatively imprecise, diffuse, and context-based, and can have more than one meaning.