THE USE OF STATISTICAL METHODS IN SCIENTIFIC TOURISM RESEARCH IN BRAZIL

ABSTRACT:

Although the number of papers and qualitative research in international scientific tourism journals is growing, quantitative research is clearly predominant. Based on this preliminary finding, this article examines the use of quantitative methods in tourism research in Brazil. It focuses on the use of inferential or multivariate statistical methods for data analysis described in articles published in three of the leading Brazilian tourism journals - Revista Brasileira de Pesquisa em Turismo (RBTUR), Revista Turismo em Análise (RTA) and Revista Turismo - Visão e Ação (RTVA). All articles published within two separate seven-year periods were selected for analysis: 1990 - 1996, and 2012 - 2018. The methods employed by the selected articles were reported using descriptive statistics. The results show that the use of advanced statistical methods in Brazilian research is lower than that of the main international scientific journals in the area. However, the list of most frequent statistical methods used shows that the tourism research in the country is improving and increasing in methodological complexity. The methods most used are those related to the analysis of latent variables, such as factorial analysis and structural equation modeling. On the other hand, a wide range of methodological alternatives has not been explored. This research points to the existence of various opportunities for innovation and methodological improvement of tourism research in Brazil.

KEY-WORDS:
Tourism research; quantitative methods; statistics; bibliometrics