ABSTRACT
This chapter intends to guide the reader in understanding, questioning, and applying basic aspects of quantitative techniques. Quantitative methods greatly enhance the study of musical processes by providing the accuracy and rigor required to produce conclusions upon which the researcher and others can rely. Music educators commonly use quantitative methods for such tasks as grading, student evaluation, contest and festival ratings, auditioning students for ensembles, and assigning chairs in an ensemble. The chapter describes that measurement is the source of quantities, and it imposes certain constraints on the manipulation of the quantities produced. Modern measurement theory is predicated on the "correspondence between a set of manifestations of a property and the relations between them and a set of numbers and the relations between them". One may quantify without employing statistics, but most quantitative research needs to describe characteristics and draw inferences.
