Description

Integrating qualitative and quantitative research approaches via the phenomenological method

WILLIAM P FISHER, JR.

Founder and Principal, Living Capital Metrics, Sausalito, CA, USA

A JACKSON STENNER

Chief Executive Officer, MetaMetrics, Inc., Durham, NC, USA

ABSTRACT

Separated and mixed applications of qualitative and quantitative methods are typically encumbered by markedly different philosophical orientations. Multiple inefficiencies arise when mixed methods work at cross purposes with each other. The phenomenological method, however, has the potential to integrate qualitative and quantitative concerns in ways that orient research towards uniform criteria of substantive meaningfulness and mathematical rigour. Three characteristics of a qualitative–quantitative methodological pluralism are described: structural invariance, substantive interpretability and the display of anomaly. When combined with networked information technologies, new opportunities emerge for a qualitatively meaningful and quantitatively precise measurement framework in the research and practice of the health sciences.

Keywords: research methods, mixed methods, Rasch models, hermeneutics, objectivity, phenomenology, methodology, invariance, quantification, and scaling methods