Mixed Methods in CAM Research: A Systematic Review of Studies Published in 2012

Table 1

Simplified comparison of typical characteristics of quantitative and qualitative approaches to research.

Characteristic	Quantitative approaches	Qualitative approaches
Ontology	Realist	Relativist
Epistemology	Knowledge limited only by technologies of knowing	Knowledge is embedded in value and culture (including the research process)
Aims/intended outcome	Universal laws	Locally situated and contextualised understandings
Relationship between researcher and participants	Distant, objective	Close, subjective
Scope	General, nomothetic	Specific, idiographic
Nature of information	Causal, mechanistic explanation and prediction	Meaning, understanding
Relationship between theory and data	Hypothetico-deductive-data confirms/falsifies theory	Inductive—theory emerges from data