Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Research Approaches Via the Phenomenological Method
International Journal of Multiple Research Approaches, Vol. 5, No. 1, pp. 85-99
Posted: 4 Nov 2010 Last revised: 8 Feb 2011
Date Written: August 3, 2010
Abstract
Separated and mixed applications of qualitative and quantitative methods are typically encumbered by markedly different philosophical orientations. Multiple inefficiencies arise when mixed methods work at cross purposes with each other. The phenomenological method, however, integrates qualitative and quantitative concerns in ways that orient research toward uniform criteria of substantive meaningfulness and mathematical rigor. Three characteristics of a qualitative-quantitative methodological pluralism are described: structural invariance, substantive interpretability, and the display of anomaly. When combined with networked information technologies, new opportunities emerge for a qualitatively meaningful and quantitatively precise measurement framework in the research and practice of the human sciences.
Keywords: mixed methods, Rasch measurement, phenomenology, philosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, network thinking, collective cognition
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