Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Historical background
- 3 Validity
- 4 Positivistic designs
- 5 Naturalistic designs
- 6 Quantitative data gathering and analysis
- 7 Qualitative data gathering and analysis
- 8 Combining positivistic and naturalistic program evaluation
- 9 Conclusions
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
8 - Combining positivistic and naturalistic program evaluation
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Series editors' preface
- Preface
- 1 Introduction
- 2 Historical background
- 3 Validity
- 4 Positivistic designs
- 5 Naturalistic designs
- 6 Quantitative data gathering and analysis
- 7 Qualitative data gathering and analysis
- 8 Combining positivistic and naturalistic program evaluation
- 9 Conclusions
- References
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Compatibilist versus incompatibilist perspectives
Chapters 4 and 5 presented designs and metaphors for carrying out program evaluation within two distinct paradigms for research. The possibility of mixing designs from these two paradigms entails the adoption of the compatibilist stance (also referred to as the accommodationist stance), discussed in Chapter 2. At the heart of the compatibility–incompatibility debate is the level at which the mixing of the paradigms is to take place. Are we mixing positivistic and naturalistic designs at the philosophical level, with the attendant assumptions about what is knowable and the relationship between knowledge and the knower? Or are we mixing designs at the methodological level, along with the associated assumptions about how we should conduct our inquiry?
The incompatibilist (or antiaccommodationist) will of course argue that our assumptions at one level flow logically from our assumptions at the other level. For example, if we choose to mix designs by using methods from both paradigms, without regard for the different philosophical assumptions that underlie these methods, we are merely mixing techniques, not methods. This, then, is the potential stalemate of the quantitative–qualitative debate: If you choose a paradigm, the methods that you choose can be used meaningfully only within that paradigm. From the incompatibilist perspective, it is possible to use quantitative techniques, to collect quantitative data, and to analyze it statistically within a naturalistic design.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Language Program EvaluationTheory and Practice, pp. 155 - 166Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1995