Intuitive Theories—a Researcher's Dilemma: some practical methodological implications

Any resemblance to psychological research is not accidental since scientific behaviourism and psychometrics are often used in support of such a paradigm. Despite swings away from the theoretical notions inherent in these psychological standpoints, in practice much published psychological research still seems to embrace values consistent with the quantitative model. This is not the place to debate the relative merits of quantitative versus qualitative approaches to research indeed, as Rist points out, if the complexities of research approaches are reduced to simple polarities we are in danger of producing 'methodological provincialism'. Nevertheless, currently there exists a schism of values between researchers which relates to the quantitative-qualitative dichotomy and is often rooted in the positivism-idealism debate of the late nineteenth century. The diagrams in Appendix A draw attention to distinctive constellations of key ideas inherent in the two approaches. The approaches have been expanded in e.g. Rist (1977), Eisner (1981), Terhart (1982), Pope, Watts & Gilbert (1983) although various labels have been used to categorise the dichotomy. 153