Review Article
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 |
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