Making methods choices

This article is a further discussion of methodological paradigms in evaluation research. More specifically, this article is a response to the attacks on paradigmatic perspectives made by Reichardt and Cook in the opening chapter of their edited book Qalitative and Quantitative Methods in Evaluation Research. They “suggest that part of this current debate over qualitative and quantitative methods is not centered on productive issues and so is not being argued in as logical a fashion as it should be.” For better or worse paradigm debates are, by their nature, only partly subject to logical analysis. Paradigms — methodological or otherwise — involve values, world view, empirical tendencies, and patterned responses. Because their central arguments rest entirely on a logical foundation, Reichardt and Cook may have done precisely what they accuse others of doing: “obscuring issues and unnecessarily creating schisms between the two methodtypes.”