Qualitative_and_Quantitative_Research_Comprison

The paper written by Rabinowitz and Wesseen should be the most interesting paper I’ve studies till now in the course, at least make me think more than the others. Before studying this paper, I think I focus more on quantitative method and thought that I will not do qualitative research not so often. But now I even think qualitative research is more important than quantitative research from some point of view. But I think before I make the conclusion, I think I’d better to try these two methods to know what they really are. By the way, in the paper of Rabinnowitz and Weseen(one is trained in quantitative tradition, the other is in qualitative research), they use semi-structured interview method to interview with doctoral students who is searching their own research method. After studying the paper, I think quantitative person actually use qualitative method to generate their hypothesis, but it is from “the qualitative method from their own life experience”, but not from others. So if they could get more perspect from the person he studied or from qualitative research of others. I think that will broaden their world view. It also mentioned that most of the paradigms in the text book are about the quantitative method such as Solomon Asch, Stanley Milgram, and Leon Festinger. But actually they also use qualitative method, but just not showing in text book, the paper also addressed. So I am thinking : is it possible that solution of QQD is that use qualitative analysis first and we collect the possible moderator viriables from it, and then use quantitative method to analyze it' And the qualitative analysis is possible coming from your own life experience or others/own qualitative research. I think that’s the answer what I had by my own. And the paper also mentioned about “Are qualitative methods scientific”, I think it depends on how you define “scientific”. And I’d like to arrange the order from qualitative to quantitative aspects for current most interesting topic. Left side is more qualitative, and the right side is more quantitative, at least from my personal point of view. Religion -> literature -> philosophy -> psychology -> medical science -> engineering So where is the boundary of science and non-science' I think showing the truth is scientific, but you need to prove it later on by quantitative analysis. And I also think finding a question is scientific, but we also need to figure out the answer of the question. And I also would like to define the boundary of qualitative and quantitative. It seems that currently we define the middle dotted line is the boundary of qualitative/quantitative method. But maybe the line on the right side is the boundary if even quantitative explanation or variables choice is easy to be caused by irrational prejudices, no matter in race, sex and nature/nurture attitude according to Unger’s study. And I also agree with the point of Unger about “It seems likely that personal experience sensitizes people to different aspects of problems, and leads some to question the assumptions taken as self-evident by others lacking such experience.” So even quantitative method, the researcher actually use their own qualitative method(life experience) to choose “some” variables they’d like to study from all the variables. If that so, I think the boundary of qualitative/quantitative will be the line on the right side. But I think I will agree more that the boundary is on the left side. And actually the qualitative research is more “scientific” than quantitative research(by current definition) because it shows more variables in the study. Further more, we may also say Shakespeare’s play is scientific because it is his qualitative research according to what he observed. Finally, I think there are some overlap between different knowledge. For instance, the paper of 李維倫 is actually combining philosophy and psychology. And this kind of combination actually enrich the knowledge and also stimulate with each other to generate new interesting creation.