PS398 Lecture 4: qualitative methods in current psychological research
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN COUNSELING PSYCHOLOGY: A PRIMER ON
RESEARCH PARADIGMS AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Ponterotto
-North American psychology, esp counseling psych, is undergoing paradigm shift from primary
reliance on quantitative methods to more balanced reliance on quantitative and qualitative
methods
Authors current perceptions:
1) psychology has been dominated by positivist and postpositivist research paradigms and
associated quantitative methods
-this has limited the pfoession's ability to advance the field in significant ways
2) there is a strong call to enhance the level of qualitative research training in counseling
psychology
-modification in training of these psychologists is not keeping pace w these calls
3) more quantitatively trained counseling psychologists are beginning to adopt qualitative
research methods into their research programs
-however some are doing this without a firm grasp of the philosophical anchors undergirding
many approaches to qualitative inquiry
-though they express verbal support for qualitative methods, their research lens is still heavily
Document Summary
Qualitative research in counseling psychology: a primer on. North american psychology, esp counseling psych, is undergoing paradigm shift from primary reliance on quantitative methods to more balanced reliance on quantitative and qualitative methods. Authors current perceptions: psychology has been dominated by positivist and postpositivist research paradigms and associated quantitative methods. This has limited the pfoession"s ability to advance the field in significant ways: there is a strong call to enhance the level of qualitative research training in counseling psychology. Modification in training of these psychologists is not keeping pace w these calls: more quantitatively trained counseling psychologists are beginning to adopt qualitative research methods into their research programs. However some are doing this without a firm grasp of the philosophical anchors undergirding many approaches to qualitative inquiry. Though they express verbal support for qualitative methods, their research lens is still heavily influenced by their postpositivist socialization. These researchers are unknowingly postpositivizing constructivist qualitative methods.
