January 8
“I thought I’d gone insane.” —Stephen King, 11/22/63.
“While Garreau’s definition involved more than just concentrations of jobs, jobs were central to it.”
(Source: loveclaire)
April 11
•All research is provisional
•All research raises as many questions as it answers
•All research is difficult to interpret and to draw clear conclusions from
•Qualitative research may be vital to elaborate experience, suggest narratives for understanding phenomena and generate hypotheses but it can’t be taken to prove anything
•Quantitative research may be able to show hard findings but can rarely (never?) give clear answers to complex questions
And yet, despite all the challenges, it is still worth attempting to encourage an evidence-based approach, since the alternative is to continue to develop practice based only on assumption and belief.
But…what if you’re not necessarily out to prove anything, because you don’t believe that there is anything to “prove”? What if you just want to describe something?
My problem with quantitative research isn’t that it can’t give clear answers to complex questions but that it is too often conflated with positivist approaches to social science and that findings are taken as The Truth without really examining the biases that can persist when working with large sets of numbers that only vaguely represent people.
(Source: abbyjean)
