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SO qualitative vs quantitative rant.
These are overlapping, indistinct, and disanalogous categories! ALL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IS QUALITATIVE! ALL EMPIRICAL DATA ARE QUALITATIVE! Even if we use stats, we are still representing/analysing the qualities of something. 1/11
These are overlapping, indistinct, and disanalogous categories! ALL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH IS QUALITATIVE! ALL EMPIRICAL DATA ARE QUALITATIVE! Even if we use stats, we are still representing/analysing the qualities of something. 1/11
'Qualities' are traits, features, aspects, states, etc. What do you think quantitative data represent if not these things? Just because someone is 'talking' about these things with numbers doesn't mean they've ceased the same fundamental activity as those who don't. 2/11
The divide between qual/quant is actually a disciplinary divide—a crude grouping of those who do stats, who mostly tend to be some variety of positivist, and the diverse, heterogeneous assortment of often very different people who don't. Doesn't matter, get in the sack. 3/11
What is REALLY going on here?
It's language. When we describe the world, we usually first do so in 'ordinary (ie normal) language', like English. Usually English actually, because hegemony. Anyway, this lets us describe in great complexity and detail. 'Richness' yada yada. 4/11
It's language. When we describe the world, we usually first do so in 'ordinary (ie normal) language', like English. Usually English actually, because hegemony. Anyway, this lets us describe in great complexity and detail. 'Richness' yada yada. 4/11
A subset of researchers are interested in the relationships between variables across multiple 'instances' of the same kind of phenomenon. It is these researchers who will find ordinary language inadequate, because ordinary language descriptions are too non-standardised. 5/11
If you are going to compare many 'instances' or 'cases', at a certain point you need to use some kind of standardised system that allows you to talk about their similarities and differences en masse. Hence: you *translate* your descriptions into mathematical statements. 6/11
By translating ordinary language into maths, you are able to engage in complex, formal analytical operations that manipulate your descriptions in ways that reveal patterns across them. They haven't stopped being descriptions. Numbers still *represent* qualities of the world. 7/11
In other words, the category 'quantitative' is really just for those whose work requires mathematisation, in order to do statistical analyses. But that's not a distinguishing characteristic of their mode of inference. It's not a distinct logic of enquiry! 8/11
Meanwhile in the qualitative sack, there is everyone from positivists who don't need maths because they study smaller numbers of cases so they can keep using ordinary language, historical materialists who think you can only ever talk about one case, poststructuralists, etc. 9/11
So where does that leave the 'qualitative vs quantitative' distinction? It's UTTERLY USELESS as a way of capturing any meaningful methodological or philosophical difference in the way the world is studied. It confuses language of description for methodological approach. 10/11
Categorising research as qualitative or quantitative is something that thoughtless and hegemonic positivists did in order to fetishise maths and marginalise disciplinary foes, then the rest of us just learned it in school and reproduced it because it was too hard to change. 11/11
