Knowing the path: qualitative vs. quantitative research design

I laughed when I saw this posted on Facebook earlier this month. Knowing where the path is going to lead is always the challenge when the plans never match the reality! This is true in my life, as in research as well.

Any researcher needs to plan the best approach for gathering data and how best to fulfil the needs of the project. This is what informs the the research design.

In a case study like mine, if the aim was to understand a cause-effect relationship, e.g., what is the effect of Tara's books on children who read them, then quantitative data approaches might be the best approach to data gathering. This would involve me designing a survey or set of multiple choice questions for an interview to be able to quantify the responses, or watching children and measuring their responses, or something similar.

However, in this research I am not looking for cause-effect relationships. What I seek is not explanation, but understanding. The two are subtly different. Explanation is a type of understanding that is narrower, and the resulting response is similar to labelling something: It's "done", off the to-do list, explained and simplified and no more thinking is required. 

But understanding seeks a different orientation: understanding doesn't seek to simply but to explore complexity. "We understand ourselves and others only when we transfer our own lived experience into every kind of expression of our own and other people's lives" (Wilhelm Dilthey, 1895). It requires a sort of compassion to recreate the motives and intentions of the people involved and put oneself in another's shoes. Understanding is connected to empathy in a way that explanation is not (Henrik von Wright, 1971).

When I designed my Tara Books project I wanted to find out how publishers could rise to the responsibilities of modern living. All of us live with this dilemma, whether we are conscious of it or not. We all impact what happens in the world and we all live with the consequences of others actions, this is true whether we are looking at our lives at the level of our businesses, families or as individuals. How we deal with the problems of our age: the environment, our communities, inequality, complexity, insecurity.  Some people plug away and try to forget about it. Others take responsibility for their actions and watch their spending and consumerism and try to direct it towards more positive ends. Others go further and actively try to change it.

So my intention here is that I want to see how a publishing operation can use its influence and resources in regards to these issues. I want to understand the motives, ideas, intentions, orientations of such a publisher who seems to consciously work to change things.

So I designed this study with the intention of including interpretation and understanding, rather than searching for causal relationships This means for my study that that will I rely on observation and open-ended interviews. 

I have no idea where this is all going to lead. A huge part of the work is to make obvious my privilege and crumble my preconceptions and ideas.

My assertions are probably all wrong and will change drastically from where I started. This changing research, the issues that will come forth as the path unfolds, is what makes it emergent and responsive. I will be throwing out ideas as I go along.
And that is the point.

I guess it all leads to the same place: embracing the unknown.  But if I can't learn to embrace chaos, I better not be heading to India!