The picture shows a group of people having a meal.
You could ask 'Is it nice?' but each answer will only be an opinion since 'nice' is hard to measure.
A better test would be to see if at least four of the seven people like the meal. The result can be measured and the answer will be a 'yes - at least four people liked it' or 'no - less than four people liked it'.
Asking 'Is it nice?' is a poor test. It can't be measured easily and is not 'quantatative'.
Finding out if at least four of the seven liked the meal can be measured. It is a quantitative test.
Good quantitative objectives
| Unit | Objective | Why |
| Multimedia | Sound of a football crowd plays when slide 3 loads | You can either hear or not hear the sound |
| Multimedia | Text on slide 5 is big enough to be read from the back of the room | A test subject can either read it aloud easily or has difficulty in reading it |
| Spreadsheets | The spreadsheet can be used to predict the future electricity costs of running the monitor | It works out the costs or fails to do so. Easy to measure. |
| Word processing | Mail merging will produce fewer errors than typing each letter seperately | Do both and see which produces the fewest errors. |
| Web publication | It will take less than five minutes to update a price on the website | This can be easily measured. |
| Database | A single record can be found in less than 20 seconds | You can easily measure this. |
Bad quantitative objectives
| Unit | Objective | Why |
| Multimedia | Slide 4 looks cool | How do you decide if it is or not? What one person says is 'cool' another person may disagree about |
| Multimedia | It's easy to find your way around | This is not precise enough. It needs a better objective such as "You can easily get back from slide 7 to the start by clicking the 'home' button" |
| Spreadsheets | It works things out easily | Vague statement. You need a more precise test like 'The spreadsheet will save time when working out weekly wages' |
| Web publication | It is quick to find | Exactly what do you mean? Some people may never find it. |
| Database | Easy to search | Too vague a test. You must say what you are searching for and test this with several people. |
| ©2006
JayDax