I would think that the decision will depend on the purpose for taking
two approaches... if the quantitative component could
complement, interact and inform your part quite usefully,
then you would want to know what is being discovered as you go along.
The advantage is that
you can ask about and possibly explain some of the preliminary
quantitative findings in your qualitative component, it would be
frustrating to find at the end that the quantitative findings led to
some really pertinent questions that you could have investigated if
you had known earlier.
Alternatively, if you want to know if the two different methods will
lead to conflicting or supporting findings independenty of each other
and you want to try and test this out without any prior
'contamination' of each other then blinding may be an option.
It would probably strengthen your findings in the eyes of others if
you can say the same conclusions were reached independently by
different people using different approaches.
I guess it depends if you are hoping to use triangulation more as a
means of strengthening your evidence in terms of the 'believability' of your
final conclusions, or as a means of broadening the number of vantage
points from which you view the research problem and improving your
process.
> Date: Thu, 07 Jan 1999 18:01:18 -0800
> Subject: Blinding of qualitative researchers in a quant/qual study
> From: Raewyn Bassett <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
> Hi. I'm working on a project that includes a quantitative and a
> qualitative component, the data for each being collected and analysed
> simultaneously by the respective teams. It has been suggested that the
> qualitative researchers be blinded to the results from the quantitative
> part of the study, similarly for the quantitative researchers. I'm
> interested in this from the point of view of someone working on the
> qualitative aspect of the study. Have others worked in this way? What are
> the pros and cons of such an approach?
>
> Raewyn.
> ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
> Raewyn Bassett Doctoral Candidate, Sociology
> Department of Anthropology & Sociology,
> University of British Columbia
> [log in to unmask]
> ph. (604) 222-9623
> fax. (604) 822-6161
>
>
Lucie Rychetnik
PhD student
Department of Public Health and Community Medicine
Faculty of Medicine
Edward Ford Building, A27
University of Sydney
NSW, 2006
Australia
E-mail [log in to unmask]
Tel +(61 2) 9351 4372
Fax +(61 2) 9351 4179
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