Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Words of Wisdom from Qual

In keeping with Kaplan's warning (1964) about "premature closure" and his stress on the importance of "openness of meaning", we continue to treat them as hypotheses to be further elaborated in future research.  While greater specificity is one hoped-for goal (in terms of both clarification of theoretical notions and the limits of their applicability), greater ambiguity is another.  Each case analysis will consist of intricate, interconnected detail, much of it perhaps unexpected.  It is the "loose ends", the stuff we neither expect nor can explain, that pushes us toward theoretical breakthroughs.  If the guiding theoretical notion truly is used heuristically, case analyses should raise additional questions relevant to understanding the concept, model, and/or theory being considered.

Vaugh, Chapter 8- Theory elaboration: the heuristics of case anslysis, pg 176


The bolded emphasis added by me to highlight the point of this post.

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