No such thing as qual/quant
No need to mention quantitative methods when you are submitting your qualitative manuscript to a journal
Sometimes I wonder how qualitative methods are taught to doctoral research candidates and also in research subjects at undergraduate or coursework postgraduate degrees. I am concerned we don’t get the balance right between exploring the affordances of qualitative methods with our students and supporting and elaborating their existing knowledge of quantitative methods. I have met academic healthcare teaching staff who are delighted to learn I am a qualitative researcher because as they explain they are required to teach it but don’t know much about it as they did not have any exposure in their training or professional work.
Likely all healthcare students are exposed to quantitative methods and the evidence pyramid. When they move into further research training their internalised paradigm is positivist. Describing qualitative methods to such students can seem I am speaking from an alien place unable to connect. One way to help make sense for them is to introduce ontology, epistemology and then methods demonstrating that since many qualitative methods have a constructivist ontology it is easier to understand why we are asking people to describe their experiences to us and finding out something from what they say rather than asking them questions to find answers or “evidence”.
As an editor when I am reading papers submitted to Qualitative Research (Sage) I sometimes note that authors write in such a way that qualitative methods are presented as non-quantitative. It is something like describing men as not-women. Absurd. Sometimes a passionate defence of a qualitative approach is laid out as if qualitative methods are not the poor relation but rather the saviour of their research endeavour.
I encourage you all to position your qualitative research as meaningful because it is following a guiding question which is important, uses a known method, and includes participants with experience of the phenomenon under consideration. Reflection on how and what you were taught and what you internalised that you might need to bring out into the open to correct and re-nuance is required to be ready to position your work according to what it is, not what it is not.