A-level and undergraduate psychology courses have always been rather dominated by quantitative research. Some quantitative studies have been enriched by supplementary qualitative data — such as Milgram’s observations of participants’ non-verbal behaviour (for example sweating, gestures) and the record of what they said (see article by Turowetz and Hollander elsewhere in this issue). But perhaps we don’t spend enough time looking at qualitative methods.
One reason for this is that we sometimes take a conservative view of science, speaking about the hypothetic-deductive method (observe, theorise, then generate and test hypotheses) that typically forms the basis of quantitative research as the scientific method, as if there were only one way to carry out truly scientific research. Qualitative researchers often have a different aim and starting point, with more emphasis on exploring and understanding than testing and demonstrating. We can see this in the two articles dealing with qualitative research in this issue.
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