Concluding remarks

6. Concluding remarks

I have attempted to offer a reconceptualization of quantitative procedures that is much more focused on how we should employ these procedures than on endorsing some of these methods over others. This reconceptualization also puts the distinction between quantitative and qualitative research in a new light. There are differences between the two kinds of research—for example, quantitative research directs more attention to concretely specifying phenomena—but the contrast is less fundamental than most researchers think. From my vantage point, both types of research are aimed at learning about concretely meaningful practices and both are pursued by investigators who are themselves participants in the world of practices.

In their commentary, Dawson et al. suggested that my view is a transitional one because, while it attempts to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods, it comes down on the side of interpretation, privileges qualitative research over quantitative, and excludes positivist approaches. They claimed that their problem-focused methodological pluralism represents a fully integrative model because it includes both positivist and what they call post-positivist approaches. In my opinion, it is the other way around. I believe that in order to integrate the two types of research we need to incorporate all useful examples of both types of work in a new overarching framework that differs from the notions that typically have served to guide each kind of inquiry in the past. As I see it, Dawson et al.’s position is a transitional attempt at integration because it does not go beyond calling for blending the two approaches and their guiding viewpoints. Remarks Yanchar offered in his position paper about mixed-model approaches very effectively present the problems with this strategy for integration (also see Yanchar & Williams, in press). By contrast, I believe that my approach offers the requisite appropriately inclusive overarching framework, which itself is derived from a hermeneutic perspective based on practices. In particular, in this rejoinder, I have tried to show that my approach does not exclude what others would call ‘‘strong’’ quantitative procedures. In addition, my approach does not subordinate this type of quantitative research to ‘‘soft’’ quantitative research, nor does it lead to subordinating quantitative research to qualitative. I believe that all of these research endeavors represent ways of understanding concretely meaningful phenomena while they differ in the degree to which they focus on concretely specifying those phenomena versus characterizing them in meaning-laden terms. All, however, are interpretive.

I will conclude with some comments on a related issue: what can we say about when to use quantitative and/or qualitative approaches? All three commentaries include the idea that choice of methods should depend on the research problem at hand. I agree with this viewpoint. In fact, I believe it is another example of the limits of inquiry, a notion that is central to my perspective. General considerations can only provide what might be called an ‘‘outer envelope’’ for thinking about how to proceed in any given research situation. This outer envelope tells us that we need to find some interpretive method for investigating the phenomenon of interest, that the phenomenon is concretely meaningful in nature, and that the challenge is to find a method or set of methods that is appropriate for this particular problem given where the possible methods fall along a continuum that ranges from the concrete to the meaning laden—although all points along this continuum have concrete and meaningful aspects. Beyond this, however, we must decide just how to explore the particular research problem at hand as investigators who ultimately pursue our investigations—as Dawson et al. said—in medias res.

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