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THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE

Working Paper · September 2017

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Working Paper: THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14288.61448/2

THE FUTILE WAR

BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
Birla Institute of Management Technology (BIMTECH), India

16th September 2017

The war between quantitative and qualitative research fraternities, often referred to as
‘paradigm wars’, is an age-old crusade that still harbours among many academicians. While
the paradigm wars started fading out in the west a decade or two ago, it still echoes on the
walls of academic institutions across the world where some people take these disputes from a
personal to institutional level. There is no consensus, no union, and no conclusion to this
dispute. It has transformed academic institutions into coliseums where the academic
gladiators fight for victory of one research methodology over the other; thereby transforming
young tarts, newly inducted in the systems, from ‘knowledge seekers’ to ‘tool bearers’, only
to breed the next generation of warriors with the same crusade to fight for. Does this have an
end? Is it going to go down well?

The long-drawn tiring debate on research paradigms and research methodologies has
created an atmosphere of hostility among some academicians and researchers, which can be
quite disturbing and shocking for new entrants in academic research. More importantly, when
debates harbour more around the domination of one method over the other, rather than
cultivating richer critical thought trials over what issues need to be researched, the
advancement of research is stunted, because it alienates itself from the sole purpose of
research, which is discovery (re-searching existing knowledge for unravelling hidden
realities). Perhaps the existence of gravity would not have been spotted by man if mankind
had a debate over men sitting below apple trees. Because in that case, man would have been
pondering on why he should or should not sit below the tree; and would have perhaps never
ever seen through why the apple fell, instead of rising to the sky. The beauty of human
existence is that we are a species with both ‘naturalist’ and ‘rationalist’ orientations, one
complementing the other; yet, we elevate one at the cost of the other. Is this conduct itself

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Working Paper: THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14288.61448/2

natural and rational? Or, is it that mankind has still not answered whether human beings are
natural creatures with the power of rationality!

In social science research, the conflict starts and often revolves around the separation
of mathematical research and non-mathematical research based on generalisation, and hailing
generalization as the criteria for giving the status quo of what is ‘scientific’ research and what
is not. In their famous book ‘Naturalistic Enquiry’ (cited more than 68,000 times), published
in 1985, Yvonna S. Lincoln and Egon G. Guba, wrote a phenomenal chapter - The Only
Generalization Is: There Is No Generalization. Quite rightfully they criticise the obsession of
scientists in outright rejection of knowledge that is of the particular; which is knowledge
without any generalisation. By the much-hailed definition of Kaplan (1964), generalised
knowledge is the one which is universally true irrespective of time and space; but in
situations of pre-defined satisfactory conditions. This outright devaluation of knowledge of
the unique has created polar communities, alienated from each other and questioning each
other from a distance. Quantitative research, which adopts positivist approach, makes
generalisation a ‘quality standard’. Qualitative researchers, who bear a social constructivist,
or interpretive approach, considers generalisation to be controversial, and non-confirmatory
to the continuously evolving diversity and complexity with specific contexts. But what is
often missed by researchers is that the buyers or beneficiaries of their research output are
little concerned with what academic groups debate on statistical generalization and analytical
generalization, but on the extent to how the research findings apply to new and different real-
life situations that they face in practice. That is known as the third kind of generalization –
Transferability (Lincoln and Guba, 1985; Firestone, 1993; Polit and Beck, 2010). If the case
is such that the beneficiaries of academic research themselves do not endorse generalisation
claimed by the academic schools, unless it undergoes their own test of transferability, what
good is the academic debate over research philosophies? Can more of less not qualify to
make research more rigorous and relevant rather than making it a battle for power (Combs,
2010)? Can we not have an intermediate position where nomological knowledge and
particularized knowledge are a symbiotic process of knowledge creation? Is it that difficult to
accept that thick descriptions and numbers are complementary to each other, and not
detrimental to each other’s existence? The very transformation of the universal truth that the
sun moves around the earth, to the universal truth that the earth moves around the sun, is

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Working Paper: THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14288.61448/2

testimony to the fact that ‘naturalistic generalisation’ would say that ‘rationalistic
generalization’ has its own finite space and time unless it is proved wrong. Yet, that
rationality displays the reality of us as humans, as much as the demolition of one rationality
by the other.

While it is indeed a generalised truth that we all are of the same species with the same
functional organs, is it a generalised truth that each of us - each man, woman, child, and the
third gender - think and act the same? While God created humanity in God’s own image,
permitting them to “take charge of the fish of the sea, the birds in the sky, and everything
crawling on the ground” (Genesis 1:27), he did not proclaim universal laws on ‘how’ to take
charge of the fish, the birds, or anything else on ground. It was left on us to decide ‘how’, and
that is what makes us different, and not all the same; that is what makes us ‘humans’. Yet,
some of us choose to ignore this presence of symbiotic relationship between the universal and
the unique, and makes this an agenda for victory of an imagined self-importance, that has to
prove the superiority of the ‘universal’ over the ‘unique’, or vice-versa. These are those
gatekeepers of academics who mobilise others from being seekers of knowledge to war-
mongering for the providence of one’s own school of thought. How encouraging will be the
generalizability of the results of an international research on the war on research paradigms?
How highly will it speak of us? Are these questions controversial or rhetorical? The readers
have to decide. But before taking their final disposition on the topic, they need to think over
what Lincoln and Guba (1985) said: Generalizations are not found in nature; they are active
creations of the mind. Empirically, they rest upon the generalizer’s experience with a limited
number of particulars not with ‘each and all’ of the members of a ‘class, kind, or order’.

The usage of qualitative and quantitative research is very simple and does not need
cosmetic surgery every now and then to suit oneself. If there is a problem and past research
does not detail out the nature of the problem and factors and dimensions associated with it, it
is evident that the area of study is nascent and needs in-depth context specific qualitative
research to gather lots of narrative, phenomenological, and experiential data, that would
represent the reality. Such representation will have thick descriptions and would unravel rich
dynamics flooding through the context. When such repeated qualitative enquiry on the same
research problem is carried out in different contexts, and a testable framework is constructed,

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Working Paper: THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14288.61448/2

quantitative research comes in for theory testing and for examining the potential of
replicability of the framework in other contexts. Themes and frameworks which are outcomes
of qualitative research, are subject to developing hypothesis that need to be tested through
quantitative techniques (Morgan, 2015). However, as said earlier, replicability and
generalizability are temporary realities. It is the symbiotic movement of qualitative and
quantitative enquiry that would keep the life cycle of a theory alive by continuously
challenging and improving it for bringing it closer to reality.

It is thus vital to accept that all research must have a significant component added to
it, which is human self-reflecting; a process which is a ‘rational’ and ‘natural’ process, that is
to be based on objective as well as objective analysis of data. It does not matter which data is
superior; they both are important in their own ways and need methodologies of analysis as
per their suitability. Fitment of methods is supposed to be determined by the nature of the
research problem and what one wants to know about it; not to epitomise one’s own area of
expertise or chair. Assigning self-imagined status to data and data analysis methodologies for
cultivating methodical dictatorship, is not going to take us to any sensible end. Trying to
prove quantitative methodology of more value than qualitative, or vice versa, has transpired
into power struggles which shadows sanity and throws development issues backstage. So
long as we squabble over ego wars by framing research agendas targeted at proving
superiority of our research methodologies, it would be the misfortune of our civilisation to
lay faith on academicians and researchers for creating cathedrals of knowledge that would be
hallmarks of sanity and impartiality.

The author is not sure if any social science journal/periodical would be willing to accept such view point working paper for
publishing; as a good number of academicians and researchers may not be sympathetic to this viewpoint. If any
journal/periodical is interested to address this issue and wants to publish this viewpoint, it would mean that there is still
hope and scope for some positive change.

The author also wants to share that his opinions expressed here are entirely his own and that his employer has nothing to do
with the viewpoint.

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 Working Paper: THE FUTILE WAR BETWEEN QUANTITATIVE AND QUALITATIVE
Subhanjan Sengupta
DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.14288.61448/2

References:

Combs, J. G. (2010). Big samples and small effects: Let's not trade relevance and rigor for power. Academy of Management
Journal, 53(1), 9-13.

Firestone, W. A. (1993). Alternative arguments for generalizing from data as applied to qualitative research. Educational
researcher, 22(4), 16-23.

Kaplan, A. (1964). The Conduct of Inquiry: Methodology for Behavirol Science. Chandler Publishing Company.

Lincoln, Y. S., & Guba, E. G. (1985). Naturalistic inquiry (Vol. 75). Sage.

Morgan, D. L. (2015). From themes to hypotheses: Following up with quantitative methods. Qualitative health research,
25(6), 789-793.

Polit, D. F., & Beck, C. T. (2010). Generalization in quantitative and qualitative research: Myths and strategies. International
journal of nursing studies, 47(11), 1451-1458.

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