Beyond the divide: Comparing and contrasting aspects of qualitative and quantitative research approaches

Abstract

As an introduction to this journal issue devoted to qualitative research methods in stuttering research, the present paper provides an overview of some of the underlying questions and issues arising from the use of qualitative approaches in research. The overview is written mindful of the historical domination of quantitative approaches to stuttering research and the likelihood that many readers of the present issue will have long experience and familiarity with quantitative approaches as opposed to qualitative ones. Consequently, qualitative research approaches are overviewed with particular reference to what have been, in our experiences, recurring queries about those methods from within the quantitative perspective. A broad definition of the inductive methods of qualitative approaches is offered and contrasted with the deductive methods of quantitative research. Subsequently, the issue of “bias” in qualitative approaches is considered, along with insights into ways of determining the quality of such approaches. It is concluded that there is no future in trying to understand or conceptualise either quantitative or qualitative research approaches using understandings transported from the other. Such an unproductive polemic or “paradigm clash” (Ingham, 1984) must be avoided as qualitative approaches to stuttering research grow in influence.

• stuttering
• research
• qualitative
• quantitative