Qualitative Analysis Paper

A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research The purpose of this article was to guide the scientific community into merging both quantitative and qualitative methodologies and to enhance cross-tradition communication between scholars of quantitative and qualitative methods. This article is written from the perspective of qualitative researchers who wish to communicate with quantitative researchers in efforts to help each other towards their similar end goal of producing valid descriptive and causal inferences. The differences amongst these two methods are contrasted amongst ten areas: approaches to explanation, conceptions of causation, multivariate explanations, equifinality, scope and causal generalization, case selection practices, weighting observations, substantively important cases, lack of fit and concepts and measurement. The authors acknowledge they are analyzing the methods based on norms and practices found within the field and that the comparison mostly focused on issues related to causal analysis.

Qualitative analysis uses a cause-of-effects approach to explain its outcomes in which qualitative scholars start with the outcome then look at the causes. Where there are holes in scientific research in which scientists cannot use their theories to explain individual events, qualitative analysis fills the void. However, quantitative analysis focuses on effects-of-causes by looking at the variables and coming to a conclusion. Both qualitative and quantitative intellectuals rephrase research questions to fit their certain criteria to solve, however the way these two methods are approached cause misunderstanding between the two. However, the authors believe that these two methods complement each other and can help further understand a topic if they both are employed. This leads to the possibly of mixed-method