[Air-L] qual/quant and all that

Deller, Ruth A R.A.Deller at shu.ac.uk
Thu May 8 02:32:35 PDT 2014


I think I may have accidentally started something I didn't mean to!  When I mentioned stats as an example in my email to the list a couple of days ago, it wasn't my intention to start a quantitative vs qualitative debate, I was just using it as a (perhaps extreme) example of how you might be assigned papers to review that are out of your comfort zone - really as a response to Jill's suggestion of people identifying their disciplinary backgrounds in the submissions process because she discussed wishing she'd been able to review more Humanities papers and submit in a format more comfortable to Humanities scholars -it was never meant to be a statement about quant vs qual vs mixed-methods or anything like that!

Ruth
-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ellis Godard
Sent: 07 May 2014 23:40
To: 'Barry Wellman'; 'aoir list'
Subject: Re: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that

I'm less interested in the methods folks employ than in their epistemology about their methods. Many ideas - that numbers are bad, that science is evil, that "positivism" is dead, etc. - are pollutive nonsense that perpetuate a qual/quant distinction that's partly spurious. Numbers are great, as is exploratory work that can't quite yet be subjected to quantification. Ethnographers can count things, and we can count things about ethnographies. Kumbaya.
-eg


-----Original Message-----
From: air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org
[mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman
Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 3:09 PM
To: aoir list
Subject: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that

I am disappointed in the implicit assumption that folks are either qual or quant.

When I had influence in the Toronto Sociology dept, I helped lead the way to ensure all grad students took a basic stats course and a basic ethnography course. They don't have to use both, but they have to be literate readers of both, and not shy away from use in fear or ignorance.

I continue to think it is the only way forward for serious IR scholarship

   Barry Wellman, who was doing "mixed methods" before it was called that.
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