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Qualitative Research from a C-OAR-SE Perspective

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Measurement for the Social Sciences

Abstract

The opening quotation, from Laurent (2000), epitomizes the “statistical tail wagging the conceptual dog” problem, which is almost totally due to the neglect of, and ignorance about, qualitative research in the social sciences. Gilles Laurent was the “champion” of my original C-OAR-SE paper for IJRM (after it was rejected by the leading marketing research journal, JMR, as too radical) and I am eternally indebted to this friend, scholar, and delightful French gentleman. He and Bobby Calder (1977), a focus-group practitioner before he became a full professor of both psychology and marketing at Northwestern University, are the only two academics who have realized and spoken out about the vital role of qualitative research for theory-building in the social sciences.

‘Simple’ causal models are logically wrong, and the empirical estimation by LISREL or some other software is not going to ‘confirm’ them.

− Gilles Laurent, Champion of the original C-OAR-SE article

We believe the data; we don’t care about the truth.

− Jeffrey Deaver, Broken Window (2008, p. 95)

Qualitative research is always the output of the fruitfulness of a human mind, both in generating hypotheses and in being insightful enough to select measures that will test the hypotheses.

– Muckler and Seven (1992, p. 442)

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  1. Institute for Innovation in Business and Social Research, University of Wollongong, Wollongong, NSW, 2522, Australia

    John R. Rossiter

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Rossiter, J.R. (2011). Qualitative Research from a C-OAR-SE Perspective. In: Measurement for the Social Sciences. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7158-6_8

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