Seeing Our Quantitative Counterparts: Construction of Qualitative Research in a Roundtable Discussion

Abstract

The research relationship between qualitative and quantitative researchers is influenced by their constructions of one another's research approaches. While we, as qualitative researchers, have our own construction of quantitative research we seldom get quantitative people's construction of qualitative research. In this paper, we present our quantitative counterpart's construction of qualitative research in the form of themes we derived collaboratively from a small roundtable discussion on the use of the qualitative approach for research management studies. We define 'construction' as the meaning structure shared by the participants on the relationship between qualitative and quantitative research. This exercise has implications for our presentation of qualitative research as a complementary research approach to quantitative research and on our on-going construction of the quantitative-qualitative research relationship. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0101127

Keywords

• research relationship
• qualitative method
• complementary research
• construction
• meaning structure
• collaborative approach