Chapter 7: Triangulation in Action: Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Methods to Research Environmental Leadership

Environmental leaders have a huge impact on critical environmental issues. We sought to learn about their values, leadership philosophies, and leadership-related challenges. We compared environmental leaders with leaders of other kinds of organizations, as well as comparing leaders of for-profit and nonprofit environmental organizations, using qualitative and quantitative research traditions.

In this chapter, we explain why and how we chose multiple research methods, and discuss the approaches and findings to illustrate how an open-ended approach enhanced our findings. Rather than viewing various research methods as part of an incompatible qualitative–quantitative dichotomy, we approached them as complementary modes of investigation, resulting in a deeper understanding of the environmental leadership phenomenon. One of our challenges was determining how to analyze and integrate our data, since our method generated an unwieldy amount, and surfaced unexpected findings.

An equally important facet of our research was the interpersonal. One rewarding aspect was the rapport and empathy we developed with our respondents, which resulted in findings that would be immediately useful to practitioners, not simply to theoreticians. Ultimately, the success of our research depended on our own relationship. The project proved to be far more than an intellectual exercise, but involved the interaction of our emotions and personal values, as well as the social climate in which we conducted the study.