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Designing nursing research: the qualitative‐quantitative debate
Author(s) -
Duffy Mary E.
Publication year - 1985
Publication title -
journal of advanced nursing
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.948
H-Index - 155
eISSN - 1365-2648
pISSN - 0309-2402
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2648.1985.tb00516.x
Subject(s) - meaning (existential) , qualitative research , epistemology , face (sociological concept) , sociology , grounded theory , qualitative property , nursing research , psychology , engineering ethics , management science , nursing , social science , medicine , computer science , philosophy , machine learning , engineering , economics
Nursing research has not evolved with immunity from the qualitative–quantitative debate which has surrounded the behavioural and social sciences. The outcome of this debate should be better nursing science since researchers are forced to face and address the controversial issues. Attaining this goal requires researchers to debate the issues with a knowledge of epistemology and methodology and not blind devotion to the tradition of the hard sciences. This paper addresses the issues of epistemology, methodology, and ethics for two prototypes of the qualitative–quantitative continuum. Grounded theory explains the issues of qualitative research: the search for meaning, the inclusion of environmental factors, the depth of data, and the treatment of participants as subjects. The true experiment, the epitomy of the quantitative approach, seeks to identify existing truths by isolating the significant variables and controlling for contaminating factors. Based on these arguments, recommendations are made for nursing research which rely on both approaches.