The issue of qualitative versus quantitative methods is rooted first and foremost in the character of the phenomena investigated and not in an investigator’s methodological preferences. If the phenomenon under investigation is non-quantitative, then it cannot be studied successfully by attempting to use quantitative methods because trying to impose quantitative concepts upon qualitative phenomena misrepresents them. If the target articles provide any guide, these truths are ignored as much by psychologists wanting to mix quantitative with qualitative methods as by mainstream quantitative researchers. These articles display both the power of the modernist fantasy that measurement is always a discretionary choice of any investigator and the power of the persistent delusion that psychological attributes must be measurable. In psychology, as ever, the ghost of Pythagoras rules.
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