K otázkam komplementarity kvalitatívneho a kvantitatívneho výskumu (V sociológii výchovy a mládeže)
To the Issues of Complementarity of Qualitative and Quantitative Research (In the Sociology of Education and Youth)

Summary/Abstract: To the Issues of Complementarity of Qualitative and Quantitative Research. (In the Sociology of Education and Youth). One of the central methodological issues in social sciences, particularly in those dealing with education, is the comprehension of the world, including comprehension of ourselves, and of our knowledge, as a part of the world. Positivism as well as empirism in social sciences emphasise particularly the quantitative research. Development in the area of methodology of sciences in the field of social and human sciences has reached, however, a conclusion that maintains that the pure quantitative thinking became unsupportable. The qualities of individual social phenomena, processes, relationships, forms, etc. cannot be reduced to only one of their dimensions – measurability. The basis facilitating a solution to such problems is orientation of social science research activities towards those methods that have their origin in the symbolic interactionalism as an interpretative paradigm, as well as in phenomenology and particularly in hermeneutics. Of course, a procedure of this kind is not easy, but it can provide a space for complementary utilization of quantitative as well as quantitative analyses that will not be running parallelly, but the former as well as the latter will provide suitable starting points (e.g. stage-based), especially for team work. We consider it inevitable to cope with contradictions of both paradigms (of qualitative and quantitative research) and to try ensuring that they complement each other in those points that were designed as their deficiencies in our essay. Complementarity and a gradual integration of qualitative and quantitative research methods is indeed a complex and seemingly mutually excluding process; but as long social and human sciences are concerned, it is perhaps the only possibility adequate to human thinking and cognition. In this sense we can speak of methodological realism. Sociológia 2003 Vol. 35 (No. 4: 333-350)

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