What is the difference between positivism and interpretivism?

Positivism and interpretivism are, broadly speaking, the two approaches to doing research in the social sciences. They both have their benefits, and they both have their downsides; lots of researchers choose to adopt a mix between the two.

Imagine that there is this question being investigated: "What is the relationship between educational attainment and race?".

Positivists would like to collect a really big picture in order to answer this question because they prioritise generaliseabiity (the extent to which the findings can be applied to areas other than that which has been studied). To do this they would undertake quantitative methods such as large scale surveys and questionnaires, and they might spend a lot of time creating statistics (or looking at secondary-source statistics). I imagine that what positivists might seek to produce would be graphs showing the correlation between racial diversity in an area, and the rates of educational attainment.

Interpretivists, on the other hand, would seek to gather a much smaller amount of data, but it would be much more in-depth. Interpretivists argue that positivists are too focussed on the breadth of the question and that, as a result, they don't collect the amount of detail that is needed in order to explain something as complex as the behaviour/actions of individuals. So, interpretivists would use qualitative methods, and these might entail in-depth interviews or focus groups with a small number of individuals. What they would produce would likely be detailed written findings of what was discussed in the interviews, and some tentative suggestions as to what correlation there might be.