Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.

I find this a fascinating article.  Well-argued, witty, intriguing... but wrong.  These folks decide there is no bottom line.  A world without universal morals or material truths?  Maybe toothache doesn't hurt in some social contexts.  More likely someone has been told to stop complaining or they'll be given something that will REALLY give them something to complain about.  But being oppressive is OK, as it's all relative.

Edwards, D., Ashmore, M. and Potter, J., (1995). Death and furniture: The rhetoric, politics and theology of bottom line arguments against relativism, History of the Human Sciences, 8, 25-49.

Why undergraduates over-rate qualtiative methods.

Murtonen, M.  (2005).  University Students' Research Orientations: Do negative attitudes exist toward quantitative methods?  Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 49, 263 - 280

This paper examines university social science and education students' views of research methodology, especially asking whether a negative research orientation towards quantitative methods exists. Finnish (n = 196) and US (n  = 122) students answered a questionnaire concerning their views on quantitative, qualitative, empirical, and theoretical methods, their readiness to use quantitative and qualitative methods in their own research, and the difficulties they experienced in quantitative methods' learning. Students were clustered in groups according to their views. Students had varying combinations of views on the methods, that is different research orientations towards methods were found in both countries. Some of the students had a dichotic attitude towards quantitative and qualitative methods; they seemed to “choose their side” between these methods. In both countries a negative research orientation towards quantitative methods was found. It was connected with either difficulties in quantitative methods' learning or with a lower appreciation of empirical methods than that of other students. Major subject and study year had no effect, so the views were not discipline-specific and students seemed to already have them on entering university. Views were quite stable during the course. A reduction in difficulties experienced with quantitative methods' learning was connected with a lowered over-appreciation of qualitative methods at the end of the course

Focus groups

You know why governments like focus groups?  Because you can sample 7 people and extrapolate from that the the country, strategically loading the groups with sympathisers.  Don't tell me it doesn't happen. 

Semioticists declare that "the text is the thing", and those studying 'discourse' will equally say that what someone says is the basic information, hence the need for a very high level of transcription (including pauses, malaprops, etc.). 

But as we all know, what someone SAYS is not what they DO.

Focus group researchers are starting to get the idea.

People say that self-report questionnaire research is subject to bias, deceit, and social desirability.

So are interviews and focus groups: .  

Why methods, self-criticism, and peer review are necessary

Science and Pseudoscience in Law Enforcement

A User-Friendly Primer

1. Scott O. Lilienfeld
   1. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia, slilien@emory.edu

1. Kristin Landfield
   1. Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia

Abstract

Pseudoscience and questionable science are largely neglected problems in police and other law enforcement work. In this primer, the authors delineate the key differences between science and pseudoscience, presenting 10 probabilistic indicators or warning signs, such as lack of falsifiability, absence of safeguards against confirmation bias, and lack of self-correction, that can help consumers of the police literature to distinguish scientific from pseudoscientific claims. Each of these warning signs is illustrated with an example from law enforcement. By attending to the differences between scientific and pseudoscientific assertions, police officers and other law enforcement officials can minimize their risk of errors and make better real-world decisions. 

Criminal Justice and Behavior October 2008 vol. 35 no. 10 1215-1230

Qualitiative approaches can cure stammering?

Beware of those who want power and authority without responsibility.  Knowledge gives you power and influence, and as such you need to acquire it with integrity, and avoid making false conclusions about causality, generality, and validity.  Many qualitative researchers are explicit about this, and accept they are researching focussed subjective experience in an area that may not lend itself to quantifiable research.  Others want the authority which validated clinical search attracts, though without havign to go through the rigorous truth criteria that it demands (often to the despair of those working in the field).

Decide for yourself whether a qualitative method cures stammering: it all reads a bit "Clever Hans" to me.

some papers to get you going

Mike Morgan's combatative challenge: http://cranepsych2.edublogs.org/files/2009/08/Qualitative_research_science.pdf

This is why I have 'issues' with much qualitative research:
http://www.badscience.net/2006/08/deconstructing-the-evidence-based-discourse-in-health-sciences-truth-power-and-fascism/

Why a blog entitled "Qualitative research is rubbish"?

This is a (provocatively-titled) blog intended to provide a critique of poor qualitative research methods, so that researchers interested in subjective and idiosyncratic experience can conduct better studies using these methods.  In my searching of the academic literatures, I find that whilst quantitative research is subject to fierce peer review, and is also subject to criticisms from qualitative researchers, qualitative and critical psychology is far less critically evaluated by it's own proponents, and positively hostile to critique from quantitative researchers.  Students appear to choose to do qualitative projects because they are anxious about statistics, not appreciating how complicated and demanding good qualitative work is.  Researchers want the freedom to move beyond sampling, control groups, reliability, validity, and narrow a priori hypotheses, and to focus in individuals, rejecting the idea of generalisation of findings.  Anyone interested in psychological questions has to consider subjectivity within what they do.  I believe that understanding human subjectivity is too important to be frittered away in what Sokal and Bricmont called "fashionable nonsense", and would like to see some debate here - not just "yah-booing" from either side.  We might all even learn something.  Let the debate begin!