What Good are Statistics that Don’t Generalize?

 

Educational Researcher, Vol. 33, No. 9, pp. 14–25

 


“Quantitative and qualitative inquiry are sometimes portrayed as distinct and incompatible paradigms for research in education. Approaches to combining qualitative and quantitative research typically “integrate” the two methods by letting them co-exist independently within a single research study.” (p. 14)”Such non-contextualized generalization is not the goal of qualitative research. Qualitative researchers typically reject the notion that there exist “true effects” that can be attributed separately to subjects, actions, or interventions; rather, they take as a fundamental premise the idea that observations are produced through
the contingent interaction of participant and researcher.7 There are a number of techniques and traditions in qualitative research, but the overarching goal of qualitative inquiry is to provide some form of what Geertz (1973b) popularized as “thick description.”8 A thick description of a context is an attempt to understand how
and why events unfolded in a particular place and time, from which the researcher can draw inferences about specific participants’ experiences, assumptions, emotions, and understandings in a given setting—and thus why they acted in the ways they did.” (p. 15)