🐯Quantitative and Qualitative Complementarity🦁

Data Series | Quantitative data, qualitative understanding, and more!

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Thank you all for trusting me with the next 5 minutes of your precious time, hopefully my writing makes you hit the share button and not the back button. Let’s get serious though—last week we talked about catching up with an acquaintance or coworker at the grocery store and sharing pleasantries and exchanging phone numbers. But as if the universe hadn't had enough fun, fast forward five minutes and three aisles later—and you run into the same person perusing organic cereals. Quick, what do you do? Pick up the chit-chat from 5 minutes ago or hit them with the strained smile and a good ol’, “Still grocery shopping, huh?” What if they pistol whip their phone’s photo album out and flash pictures of little Timmy at his karate tournament, “He’s destined for NASA!” they declare with parental pride. You get away finally, your ice cream is at about 80% frozenness now. Suddenly an all too familiar voice sounds off from behind, “Oh, you like almond milk too?” and “Can you believe the price of avocados these days?”

The dynamics that make these sorts of experiences awkward and hilarious are varied, intricate, and not so serious. But what if they were? What if the variability of our situation, access to critical resources, and seriousness hindered us? For millions, it does.

Let’s talk about it.

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We take sharing medical stories from Uganda seriously. Rest assured, all photos and patient information have written consent from parents, who are always present with their child. Wefwafwa Andrew, a Ugandan certified medical officer, runs a Ugandan government-recognized NGO and works closely with families. All content can be pulled at the parents request. We're in this purely for educational and humane reasons, not profit.

Ashraf

Malnutrition is a significant challenge in many regions within Uganda, with each area facing unique circumstances and issues. Providing healthcare to patients is one facet in a larger narrative to strengthen communities by empowering self-sufficiency. Ecological and economic factors impede food production and accessibility, resulting in inadequate nutrition for children. Eliminating malnutrition fosters stronger, more resilient communities. Proper nutrition is foundational for children’s development. It influences their educational performance and future as an active member in their community. Addressing nutrition alone doesn’t warrant a silver bullet solution, as children’s well-being is dependent on various social, economic, and environmental factors.

Ashraf, nearing two years old in Mbale, faces daily struggles with malnutrition. His experience mirrors that of others who face unique challenges and circumstances that impede their ability to access adequate nutrition in the Manafwa District. His family's limited resources and financial constraints exacerbate the situation. It's depressing to acknowledge that children like Ashraf succumb to malnutrition—just last month, another child under Wefwafwa's care did. The tireless effort by Wefwafwa and other individuals to support Ashraf and other children in similar situations makes a tremendous difference for their community. There is no one-size-fits-all approach to offsetting malnutrition, as each person or child has their own challenges and difficulties.

In the world, there are millions of children like Ashraf who aren’t getting the nutrition they need. Typically, they’re all lumped together into a singular sentence that reads something like:

For accessibility, these sentences have been simplified and aren't direct quotes, while preserving their essential meaning.

The global hunger crisis worsened in 2021, affecting up to 828 million individuals.

Around 45 million children worldwide are acutely undernourished.

• UN Report: Global hunger numbers rose to as many as 828 million in 2021

Globally, an estimated 149 million children are chronically undernourished.

Undernutrition is a direct or underlying cause in 45% of all child deaths globally.

• Malnutrition: the silent pandemic

Sentences like these in academic papers often make readers’ eyes glaze over due to the sheer scale of the numbers involved. It's challenging impossible to visualize 828 million people facing hunger. While the data collected is invaluable, understanding the crisis deeply often requires a closer look at individual experiences.

If you’ve read Orwell’s 1984, you might recall this:

For example, the Ministry of Plenty’s forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at a hundred and forty-five million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been overfulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than a hundred and forty-five millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot.

Similarly, it feels as if one-hundred and forty-nine million individuals “was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than a hundred and forty-five millions.” Likelier still, nobody knows exactly how many children are hungry, and the gravity of the situation is underappreciated or overlooked by many but not all. I bring up Orwell’s use of numbers to underline a subtle yet crucial misunderstanding: Massive statistics often blur our perception, making us forget that each number represents a unique, individual experience.

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Part I. Bridging Quantitative Data and Qualitative Insight

Quantitative data and qualitative understanding are complementary, both essential for developing a well-rounded worldview. Misconceptions arise when the goals and aims of one are incorrectly prioritized or mistaken for the other. Quantitative data frames broad overviews, provides meaningful insight, and outlines the scope of a global issue. It can also unveil nuanced details that aren’t captured by qualitative analysis. Qualitative analysis is like a new restaurant’s flashy appeal while quantitative data is the unsung Yelp review whispering, ‘Psst, that place sucks, but have you tried that hole-in-the-wall down the street?’ Quantitative data bridges gaps in widespread trends, providing insight into collective experiences and revealing subtle patterns and variations within and between populations. This approach deepens our appreciation for the multifaceted challenges individuals face. Take, for example, datasets that unveil a story of specific demographic groups disproportionately affected and requiring urgent attention. Consider datasets revealing that while Town A urgently needs clean water, Town B, just fifty miles away, is in critical need of malaria nets. These datasets are only the beginning as advanced techniques like predictive modeling and machine learning create insight to preemptively address issues. Town A’s water quality may be a recurring issue over the last fifty years and with predictive models, it can be proactively controlled before it affects people’s health again. Quantitative data affords a degree of objectivity that is necessary and absent in experiential and anecdotal evidence. Replicability and quantitative analysis afford validity for findings and act as frameworks to systematically address complex global challenges.

A quantitative approach allows policymakers, researchers, and organizations to allocate resources, set priorities, and advocate for change. An organization led by Wefwafwa, a medical clinical officer in Uganda, called the Buwanga Way to Health Foundation purchases and distributes mosquito nets to communities and individuals with the highest demand and based on critical need. Misaligned aid, like an over-distribution of mosquito nets to a community in more urgent need of antibiotics and food, highlights the importance of understanding specific community needs. Foreign relief efforts fall short when they do not accurately address the specific quantitative needs of a community due to a failure in understanding the community’s scope and nuances. Yet, data alone cannot provide the depth and context necessary to truly understand the experiences of individuals represented within these statistics. Attempting to extrapolate the human experience solely from numbers results in depersonalization and detachment. Adopting a holistic and personalized approach lends meaningful quality to the data.

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Part II: Navigating Complex Crises Through Nuanced, Localized Understanding

Qualitative understanding explores the intricate dynamics within global crises. It is often time-sensitive, specific, and nuanced to individual experiences. It accounts for socio-economic status, geographical location, and access to local resources that create unique challenges and experiences for people within the same crisis. Whereas expertise is often associated with someone with a scholastic background and understanding of the academic or technical knowledge for crises—lived experience and local knowledge are critical forms of expertise for problem solving crises too. Someone who majored in business performs differently than someone who has been in business for decades. Both insights are valuable and one does not replace the other, but sometimes one undervalues the other. Personal stories act like a window into crises, sharing stories that help foster empathy and understanding for complex, often misunderstood issues. Universal one-size-fits-all approaches lack flexibility and may invisibly enforce certain biases and oversights. Data collection and interpretation practices should emphasize individual experiences as well as shared commonalities.

For example, instead of focusing on millions of people, researchers could assess food security in a community by collecting data through surveys quantifying individual and family access to food complemented by in-depth interviews detailing individuals’ daily experiences with hunger and nutritional challenges. The surveys would illustrate the widespread malnutrition affecting the community and the interviews would reveal varied experiences. Each family would have access to different resources and face different challenges. The experiences could vary dramatically. One family might depend on food banks, while another deals with multiple children stunted by malnutrition, and another family might be able to afford food but doesn’t have access to purchase balanced and nutritious ingredients. These problems are multifaceted and complex within a single community. Attempting to stretch the scope to more communities immediately shatters the initiative, and fails to tackle food security on a global scale. These issues need local efforts, supported by a mix of quantitative and qualitative approaches.

Summary Integrating quantitative data with qualitative understanding enhances our perception, providing a more informed, compassionate, and culturally sensitive view of both macro and micro-level issues. Global crises require a delicate blend of quality data that brings massive statistics into the light of relatability and understanding. Only then, can we empower people and communities.

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Thanks for Reading!

Curated by Wefwafwa Andrew and Rex Soderlund

Each week we’re putting together content and discussions for readers like you.

The Liger is aimed at providing a place to express intelligent ideas about global networking, outreach, initiatives, and Uganda.