Two Approaches:
- Qualitative
- Quantitative
- ‘numerical
precision’
- ‘number
crunchers’
‘Knowledge
is political, partial, relative, socially
constructed, and accepted according to its
personal value’
This is a philosophical
debate
- Different beliefs about the
world
- Different beliefs about
knowledge
- Different ideas about how you
learn about the world
Quantitative Approach
- Based on a Natural Science
model
- Rooted in a positivist
epistemology:
- the world consists of
phenomena which are real, useful, certain,
precise, organic, and relative
- knowledge consists in and only
in the description of the coexistence and
succession of such phenomena
- A ‘realist’
perspective
- a single reality
- only need
‘right’ concepts to think about it
- Interested in observable
causes and effects
- Objectivity
- social distance
- nomothetic analysis
- summarized across many people
- no individual data/stories
- Deductive approach
- prediction
demonstrates understanding
- process:
- theory
- prediction (hypothesis)
- testing
- theory development
Qualitative Approach
- Human-centred
- Phenomenological approach
- what goes on
‘inside people’s heads’ is
critical to understanding
- Don’t want
distance - subjectivity is part of the approach
- Goal is verstehen
- empathetic
understanding
- interpretive meaning
- requires
intimacy, not distance
- Inductive approach
- data result in theory
- description of
individual cases
- understanding each
situation in context
- Idiographic analysis
- focus on the
individual
- no interest in
aggregation
- Constructionist
- reality is
constructed
- ‘truth’
depends on perspective
- Results in an emphasis on
process, rather than outcome
- how is understanding
constructed?
Questions? email ajohnson@uwo.ca
This page was last updated on Sunday,
February 21, 1999 at 08:28:35 PM