[Air-L] qual/quant and all that

[Ellis Godard]

Unintended consequences are a natural part of conversation - asides,
reminders, etc. :)

I can understand both the suggestion from you that folks might hesitate at
something too statistical and Barry's critique of the idea that someone
would be only a quant or qual person. Partly, it's a disciplinary
difference: You're in Communications (and I've taught methods courses in
such departments, where quant skills are narrower) and he's in Sociology (my
own discipline, rife with riffs about qual vs quant).

But to the extent there's tension between the two ideas, you win: Reviewers
should have a level of expertise in what they're reviewing that exceeds the
baseline literacy level Barry thinks all Soc students should have.

-eg


-----Original Message-----
From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces at listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Deller,
Ruth A
Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2014 2:33 AM
To: 'aoir list'
Subject: Re: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that

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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