Mixing Methods in Psychology

The Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Theory and Practice

Zazie Todd, Brigitte Nerlich, Suzanne McKeown, David D. Clarke

• Publisher: Psychology Press
• Year: 2004
• ISBN:
  9781134663842
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Can qualitative and quantitative methods be combined effectively in psychology? What are the practical and theoretical issues involved? Should different criteria be used to judge qualitative and quantitative research?The acceptance of qualitative research methods in psychology has lead to a split between qualitative and quantitative methods and has raised questions about how best to assess the validity of research practice. While the two approaches have traditionally been seen as competing paradigms, more recently, researchers have begun to argue that the divide is artificial. Mixing Methods in Psychology looks in detail at the problems involved in attempting to reconcile qualitative and quantitative methods both within and across subjects. All angles of the debate are discussed, covering areas as
diverse as health, education, social, clinical and economic psychology. The contributors, who are some of the leading figures in the field, present theoretical and methodological guidance as well as practical examples of how quantitative and qualitative methods can be fruitfully combined. By aiming to bridge the gap between the two methods, this book reveals how each can inform the other to produce more accurate theories and models of human behaviour.This groundbreaking text will be essential reading for students and researchers wishing to combine methods, or for anyone who simply wants to get a better understanding of the debate.

Part I
Theoretical and historiographical
foundations

1
Introduction

Zazie Todd, Brigitte Nerlich, and Suzanne McKeown

Synopsis and rationale

Qualitative methods has been a growth area in psychology in recent years. The many books introducing psychologists to qualitative research methods include Banister, Burman, Parker, Taylor, and Tindal’s (1994) Qualitative Methods in Psychology: A Research Guide and Richardson’s (1996b) edited BPS Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Psychology and the Social Sciences. At the same time, the debate over qualitative methods has continued to rage in the pages of The Psychologist.

In most cases, qualitative methods are seen as an alternative and competing paradigm to quantitative methods. The differences between the two approaches are illustrated by Bryman (1988), with quantitative research tending to use hard, reliable data, and to have a view of the social world as external to the observer, in contrast to qualitative methods which use rich data and see the social world as being constructed by the observer. Hammersley (1996) distinguishes two approaches to the qualitative-quantitative divide, neither of which he sees as an accurate conceptualisation: the idea of them as competing paradigms breaks down under closer scrutiny since neither position is always identified by a particular epistemological viewpoint or a particular kind of data; the alternative approach, that of a “methodological eclecticism” which sees the methods as equal but suitable for different purposes, can lead us to ignore some of the philosophical and theoretical issues which are nevertheless relevant to discussions of method.

There have been few books that attempt to bridge the gulf between the newer qualitative methods and the older, but still dominant, quantitative methods used in psychology and the social sciences. In this volume, we explore some of the issues around the qualitative-quantitative divide in psychology, looking at both the theoretical and practical considerations of a mixed-method approach.

Theoretical background: the split between quantitative and qualitative methods in psychology

To study the human being in all its aspects, psychologists make use of a range of methods. However, since the inception of psychology as a “science” in the nineteenth century, quantitative methods have been the favourite choice. They have even become, as Danziger calls it in analogy to Kant’s categorical imperative, the “methodological imperative” (cf. Danziger, 1985). Since the end of the nineteenth century these methods have been increasingly refined by more and more complex types of statistics, and they have been adapted to computer technology.

However, since the 1960s some psychologists, especially those dealing with social phenomena, have become dissatisfied and disillusioned with the products of this purely quantitative approach to human nature, and have opted for a more naturalistic, contextual and holistic understanding of human beings in society. The methods they favour have come to be known as qualitative methods. They range from ethnographic fieldwork, especially participant observation or direct social observation in the context of everyday life, to structured and unstructured interviews, surveys, documentary historical research, and most prominently in recent years, various types of discourse and conversation analysis, personal construct work, action research, grounded theory, and feminist methodology (cf. Banister et al., 1994:2). These methods focus on the interpretative (or hermeneutic) understanding of the meaning of human actions and institutions as against the purely quantitative measurement of human behaviour and cognition, its experimental study and the statistical generalisations drawn from it.

Quantitative and qualitative methods could “just” be possible choices, chosen to tackle certain psychological problems; instead they have become rather entrenched ideological or epistemological positions, also called paradigms. From the standpoint of those who choose quantitative methods, which are themselves modelled on and compatible with methods used in the natural sciences, using qualitative methods means debasing psychology as a “science”. From the standpoint of those using predominantly qualitative methods, modelled on and compatible with methods used in the humanities, those who adhere to the quantitative “camp” devaluate the human being which should be at the centre of psychology as a discipline.

As Bryman writes, qualitative researchers prefer “an approach to the study of the social world which seeks to describe and analyse the culture and behaviour of humans and their groups from the point of view of those being studied” (Bryman, 1988:46). They see this as quite different from the perspective of the natural scientist probing, for instance, a piece of rock (to take a rather crude example). In qualitative psychology researchers adopt the point of view of the subjects being studied, something that is impossible to do in the natural sciences. They also acknowledge their own central position in the construction of knowledge and are aware that “the knower is part of the matrix of what is known” (DuBois, 1983:11 quoted in Banister et al., 1994: 151). This means that qualitative research has a reflexive quality (cf. Woolgar, 1988). This reflexivity bridges the gap between subject (investigator) and object (the investigated) (Banister et al., 1994:2), a gap that had been opened up by quantitative research in order to be able to study persons in the ways rocks are studied. Quantitative psychology tried to study “subjects” as “objects”, overlooking the intrinsic reflexivity involved. In focusing not on measuring but on understanding people’s or subjects’ behaviour, qualitative psychologists claim to produce what they believe psychology should produce: a better understanding of human thinking and acting which could lead to human beings being able to understand themselves better and to improve their thinking and acting.

However, this goal is not yet generally accepted by psychologists, who remain entrenched in their respective positions. Whereas qualitative researchers accuse quantitative ones of positivism, reductionism, determinism, and objectivism, quantitative researchers accuse qualitative ones of fuzziness and subjectivity. To summarise the opposing views very succinctly: we have a reliance on measurement vs. meaning, and on lived experience (Erlebnis) vs. impersonal experiment. In general, quantitative approaches are regarded as mainstream psychology, qualitative ones as an alternative approach.

It could be argued that ideally psychologists should all live happily in the paradise of “methodological pluralism” (cf. Sechrest & Sidani, 1995:77). However, as things stand, the reasons why people choose to use quantitative or qualitative methods are not always such practical or pragmatic arguments. The reasons why psychologists choose quantitative or qualitative methods depend on a certain hierarchy of options. There are epistemological reasons (one could also say ideological ones), depending on the framework for the “acquisition of knowledge” in which the researchers work—this is mainly a choice between experimental psychology and any type of alternative psychology. The choice of method also depends on the paradigm the researchers work in, which is itself determined by the epistemology. These high-level choices then determine the choice of the research programme, and finally the choice of the theory the researchers want to test with the adequate method. One could call all these the legitimate reasons that can be used to justify the choice of a method. However, there are also less legitimate motives for choosing a method, and these are political reasons. A method is chosen that fits in with the most profitable research programme and with the most dominant paradigm and epistemology. The ultimate reason here is not the advancement of knowledge, but the advancement in the psychological establishment. And finally, methods are also chosen for their cost-effectiveness. Qualitative methods are usually more time-consuming and therefore more expensive, whereas certain quantitative methods are quickly and relatively cheaply implemented. They are therefore chosen even by qualitative researchers so as to give the research into a certain topic a quick-start, to be followed up by more intensive qualitative research if the results achieved through quantitative research warrant such an expense.

In this book we want to overcome the political barrier erected by some psychologists, be they from the qualitative or quantitative camp. To break this barrier we shall provide examples of psychologists who have successfully climbed over this political wall, explored the fields that lie on both sides, and made some breakthroughs that join them. In the following section some misconceptions about the qualitative/quantitative divide will be dispelled.

The differences between empirical, experimental, quantitative, and qualitative psychology

One should be careful not to confuse three different methodological strands in mainstream psychology, throw them all into one pot and cover them firmly with the lid marked: positivism and reductionism. These three strands are: (1) empirical psychology; (2) experimental psychology; and (3) quantitative psychology. Their roots are very different.

Empirical psychology has the longest tradition of the three, being “done” at least since Antiquity and systematised by nineteenth-century post-Lockean and post-Kantian empiricist philosophers and psychologists. In a sense, both quantitative and qualitative methods are empirical, that is, dependent on observation, the only difference is how these observations are made and how they are interpreted (cf. Sechrest & Sidani, 1995:78).

Experimental psychology is of somewhat newer date. As Woodworth has pointed out in the “Preface” to his classical introduction to experimental psychology, a “few scattering titles date from the earlier centuries and from the first half of the nineteenth”, but “the upswing began about 1850 and still continues”. Writing in the 1930s, he regards “the recent period” as “outstanding in quality as well as quantity of original research”. The pioneers of experimental psychology were Helmholtz, Weber and Fechner in Germany, Galton in England and Binet in France (cf. Woodworth, 1938: iii). The person who institutionalised psychology as an experimental laboratory science was Wundt. From then onwards there was a shift away from the single author writing monographs about “the soul”, towards a team of authors writing articles based on experiments and publishing them in journals. That is, one can observe a shift from the single author to the aggregate author.

Quantitative psychology, linked to experimental psychology as new method to older paradigm, is of more recent origin still. Whereas the impetus for the establishment of experimental psychology came from advances in physiology, biology and physics, the use of predominantly quantitative methods was triggered by advances in mathematics and statistics, and the promises held by psychometrics.

What distinguished quantitative or statistical experimental psychology from the older forms of experimental psychology, was the focus away from the individual and towards the aggregate, this time not on the level of the authors of books or articles but at the level of the “subjects” studied. There was a shift away from using single subjects in experiments (who, in early experimental psychology, could still be the psychologists involved in the experiments themselves), towards a pool of subjects. The applicability of these aggregate results to individual cases then became a problem, that still plagues psychology today. As Danziger has pointed out:

psychology was left with two very different frameworks for justifying its knowledge claims, the one based on an individual attribution of psychological data, the other necessarily relying on statistical norms. Both types of knowledge claim rested on the demonstration of certain regularities that could be interpreted as having psychological significance.
But the nature of the regularities was fundamentally different in the two cases. In the case of the traditional paradigm for experimental psychology, as established by Wundt, the regularities demonstrated had an immediate causal significance. […] The knowledge one obtained referred directly to particular psychophysical systems. But where the established regularities were attributed to groups of individuals, the system to which one’s data referred was no particular psychophysical system but a statistical system constituted by the attributes of a constructed collective subject.

(Danziger, 1990:77–78)

This means that experimental psychology, heralded by Wundt’s setting up a first laboratory in 1879, was not always quantitative (cf. Shadish, 1995). The method still most commonly used was introspection and the results reached by introspection were not necessarily quantifiable. The famous social psychologist McDougall pointed out for instance that Titchener’s manual Experimental Psychology was divided into two parts, dealing with “qualitative experiments” and “quantitative experiments” (McDougall, 1901:538). But under the influence of physiology and psychophysics, quantitative methods came to be used more and more often, especially in Germany and England, either in tandem with introspection as in Wundt’s laboratory, or exclusively so as in Ebbinghaus’s and Galton’s research. In France the quantification of experimental psychology went at a somewhat slower pace, and psycholog...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Part I: Theoretical and Historiographical Foundations
• Part II: Mixing It Up
• Part III: Examples of Mixed Method Research
• Part IV: Mixing Methods Within the Discipline
• Further Reading