Developing Research Proposals by Pam Denicolo Lucinda Becker

Author:Pam Denicolo, Lucinda Becker [Pam Denicolo, Lucinda Becker]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Research
ISBN: 9780857028662
Google: HgxSLF2N5c0C
Goodreads: 13808652
Publisher: SAGE
Published: 2012-03-05T00:00:00+00:00

CLARIFICATION OF ‘SHORTHAND’ TERMS

Before addressing the detail of the content of this section it is worthwhile discussing a common misunderstanding – or rather mis-attribution – that arises when workers within disciplines or sub-disciplines use abbreviations or words that are well understood in that system. One case is the term ‘data’ that pervades the sciences and social sciences as a term to denote pieces of information. We hope that colleagues in the arts and humanities who prefer other terms will tolerate the use of data in this text. Another example is the use of the adjectives ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’. Not only do textbooks abound with the terms ‘qualitative research’ or ‘quantitative research’ in the titles, but in addition, the majority of methods books use the terms as a shorthand for describing research methods producing data that are non-numerical or numerical in nature. Because such data are more usually found in work following, respectively, the constructivist/critical theory approaches or positivist approaches, this then leads to erroneous assumptions that if the researcher is to be consistent within an approach, mixed methods would be problematic.

This is an example of taking assumptions one step too far because, although data can be either qualitative or quantitative, any approach can use either or both kinds of data to resolve problems. In order to avoid any problems in the discussion that follows we will refer to positivist and interpretivist approaches as our shorthand terms and we will assume which data which are either qualitative or quantitative in nature might be sought to resolve problems.

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