Response Reporting on Qualitative and Quantitative Research: Evolving Issues and Criteria

Abstract

A look at recent nursing research in Canada in our two national publications, and also at national, regional, and local nursing research conferences shows a major shift from more hard-nosed, purely quantitative approaches toward more context-embedded, qualitative methods of enquiry. The preceding paper is an example of this trend. Nursing is not alone in this shift. It is seen in other professional disciplines, such as education, as well (Miles and Huberman, 1984). Like our early efforts at experimental and descriptive research, we have borrowed our methods from other disciplines. It took time to develop a body of nursing knowledge that built on, and refined for our use, the theories and methods needed to deal with quantitative nursing data. This body of nursing literature i6 now expanding to include more theory and methods of qualitative inquiry (Glaser and Strauss, 1966; Knafl and Howard, 1984), but it is still immature and incomplete.