Financial Accountability & Management

Article Type: Commentary From: Qualitative Research in Accounting & Management, Volume 9, Issue 3

Qualitative versus quantitative research

Is qualitative research better than quantitative research? This is a false dichotomy. There are many opportunities for a mixed research methods approach,although some particular approaches are more amenable to use in particular study settings. So, this is a judgement call by the researcher.

Motivation

Why do researchers use the qualitative approach? One dimension of this is that group of researchers who feel that the quantitative approach offers a spurious accuracy. They feel uncomfortable with the apparent precision with which rather soft variables are said to be captured by quantification. Another group of researchers clearly enjoy dealing with messy, complex problems in a relatively unstructured way and also in a way that tests their ability to offer nuanced interpretations of phenomena. There is yet another subgroup of researchers who have been in the quantitative camp, but have become rather disillusioned by its outputs and the manner in which statistics can shape the research and have shifted to using a more qualitative approach as offering deeper insights into social investigation.

How robust is qualitative research

One argument which is frequently made about the qualitative approach is that the explosion of interest in case studies is somehow inferior to a randomised statistical approach that yields generalisable findings. I am indebted to my colleague, Charlotta Lavay, who introduced me to the following pronouncements of the eminent medical scientist, Ramachandran:

Presenter: It would be easy to discard these fantastic case studies as deviations, with little relevance to the rest of us.

Ramachandran: Many people react by saying,“But that is just one patient, it is an n of one”.

But my usual rhetorical response to this is to say: Well look, supposing I bring a pig to this podium, and I say this pig can talk, you say, “Really?”,and I wave my hand and it starts talking, what would your reaction be?

You are not gonna say, “Well that’s just an n of one, show me another pig”.

You’d say, “!*!!”$, that pig is talking!

And yet, the reaction of some of my colleagues is to say, “Show me another talking pig”.

This is, of course, the famous black swan argument, as elaborated upon by Karl Popper. If it is proposed that all swans are white, it just takes the discovery of a single case – a black swan – to make this proposition invalid. So, case study and other forms of qualitative research can indeed be significant.

Contribution

What does the qualitative approach offer us? There are lots of interesting qualitative studies which demonstrate the merits of a qualitative approach. Examples of interesting cases of this variety abound within the pages of Financial Accountability & Management (FAM). This includes Laughlin’s study of the Church of England (FAM, Vol. 6 No. 2); Luca Zan’s study of the Imola Academy (FAM, Vol. 14 No. 3); Jones and Dewing’s NHS case study (FAM, Vol. 13 No. 3); Johnsen’s study of local government performance measurement (FAM, Vol. 15 No. 1); Fischbacher’s participation observation at a hospital board (FAM, Vol. 14 No. 4);Paulsson’s study of central government (FAM, Vol. 22 No. 1). The use of longitudinal studies is an excellent vehicle for qualitative research– see Purdy’s study of ward nurses (FAM, Vol. 9 No. 1);Parker’s study of a church (FAM, Vol. 19 No. 4); Bruce Gurd’s longitudinal study of a regulated environment (FAM, Vol. 19 No. 1);Janne Jarviren’s longitudinal study of hospital costing (FAM, Vol. 22 No. 1). The use of the qualitative approach has also been used to unpack complex problems of hybrid organisations across health and social care(Kurunmaki and Miller, FAM, Vol. 22 No. 1). The range and scope of these studies reveals high quality, innovative research in complex study settings.

Practice

Does qualitative research influence practice? This is a longstanding preoccupation of academic accountants, and a debate that goes back decades. We need to think about what practice is – this is not as straightforward as it seems. We need to consider how research may influence “practice”. In a world of evidence-based policy research, qualitative research has its place to play in identifying problems, examining underlying stresses and strains, and offering potential ways forward. More generally, we need to consider the manner in which academic researchers act as filters for the wider community of practising accountants and the many avenues by which ideas are transmitted to practitioners. The idea of practising accountants sitting down to read through academic journals is far-fetched. But there are many media which can make the distillation of substantive research accessible to practitioners. Also, in this debate, we must defend the duty of academics to ask difficult questions and undertake research which may not, of itself, contribute directly to research impact, but which cumulatively adds to our stock of knowledge in academe.

Irvine Lapsley