Quantitative And Qualitative Approach

From the second-half of the nineteenth century, two major approaches to the study of reality have become predominant and part of an ideological conflict still lasting nowadays. The qualitative-quantitative divide plays at different levels, from the epistemological debate between positivism and interpretivism, to the ontological (constructionism vs objectivism) passing through the more methodological issues. The quantitative approach implicitly assumes the existence of an objective world, independently from our thought, a “res extensa” standing autonomously from the human reasoning (res cogitans). The object of research is, thus, “discovered” through a deductive approach towards data, which are collected in order to test hypothesis on the base

Purists from both sides advocate the incompatibility thesis (Howe 1988) which assume that “accommodation between paradigms is impossible” so that the two methods cannot and should not be mixed as they are “led to vastly diverse, disparate, and totally antithetical ends” (Guba, 1990, p.81). So, on the basis of these considerations, it might be plausible to claim the existence of a concrete dichotomy between quantitative and qualitative and to assume the coexistence of two (or more) paradigms in the study of social sciences.

Despite this, if we move towards a more practical perspective we may see that the boundaries between the two paradigms are blurring as every research is an “inextricable mix of quantity and quality” (Campelli, 1996, 25). Silverman (2000) considers “such dichotomies or polarities in social science as highly dangerous. At best, they are pedagogic devices for students to obtain a first grip on a difficult field—they help us learn the jargon. At worst, they are excuses for not thinking, which assemble groups of researchers into “armed camps,” unwilling to learn from one

Hence, qualitative methods might be suitable for findings new patterns, causal links and relationships so as to “shine light into discovery” (Delli Zotti 1996). As a consequence, these methods are referred to the context of discovery (Reichenbach) as being more flexible and useful in explanatory research letting the researcher to discover unknown facts not included by previous theories. By contrast, qualitative methods seem to be less adequate in the so-called context of justification. Quantitative methods might be better models for replicability and testing theories due to their great methodological