Complementary Methods Research

Complementary methods refers to the use of more than one method when a researcher seeks illustration, clarification, or elaboration about research findings. Complementary methods research permits curriculum studies researchers to use quantitative and qualitative methods in the same study as needed to garner deeper insights. This class of methods entered in the educational research community landscape in the late 1980s when Richard Jaeger published his textbook, Complementary Methods for Research in Education, under the auspices of the American Educational Research Association. This book was based upon a series of audiotapes in which a committee of researchers concerned about the overreliance of quantitative methods and their dominance in research publications sought to make a greater set of resources about methodological inquiry available to graduate students and instructors of educational research methods courses. The dominant role that quantitative methods once had played in educational research tended to overshadow the potential contributions and publications that verbal and visual forms of data collection and documentation held.

Many researchers treat epistemology and methods as though they are synonymous. However, differences in epistemological beliefs—that is, how knowledge is and can be known—does not have to be the basis for justifying the selection of methods. For example, if a qualitative researcher wants to utilize methods typically associated with quantitative methods to promote a deeper understanding of his or her results, adherence to a particular epistemology such as constructivism should not prevent this type of additional inquiry. The same is true for quantitative researchers who tend to hold the epistemology of objectivism. This belief should not prevent the researchers from [Page 133]using in-depth interviews with achievement test takers whether they are also interested in how test-taker participation and achievement scores are related. Complementary methods is one way to overcome the chasm that has been artificially created by individuals who hold an allegiance to the epistemology of objectivism even though the research question may beg for inquiry using methods that are most nearly aligned with a constructivism epistemology.

In the last 20 years, the research community has expanded exponentially beyond the traditional ways of knowing to include gendered, poststruc-tural, and indigenous ways of knowing and to different ways of addressing the complexity of phenomena through the use of multilevel, hierarchical linear measurement and structural equation modeling. The emergence of complementary research has heightened as the world and study of phenomena becomes increasingly more complex. In general, social scientists and specifically educational researchers are beginning to recognize that training students narrowly, for example, in only a single approach to conducting studies, such as conceptualizing problems from a political point of view, can significantly shape how they approach the study of problems. The issues surrounding the use of complementary methods are not limited solely to the fields of social science, educational research, or curriculum studies. The philosophical traditions of many fields of study such as medicine, dentistry, psychology, and history, among others, have been challenged by the use of complementary or alternative forms of inquiry. In educational research, the use of complementary methods such as qualitative research was subjected to considerable scrutiny and criticism by quantitative researchers for almost two decades.

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