Research, Quantitative

Quantitative versus Qualitative Research

Hans Reichenbach identified two research contexts: the context of discovery and the context of verification. Qualitative research is best suited for the context of discovery or exploration. In contrast, quantitative research is best suited for the context of verification, or for testing whether things are related to one another (correlational research) or differ from one another (experimental research). Research accumulates slowly, often not being applicable to educational or other environments until several confirmatory studies have been done. Systematic reviews of an area provide the analysis and synthesis that often build a needed link between research and practice. The quantitative review procedure of meta-analysis summarizes effect sizes from a number of quantitative studies to provide an overall effect size that allows conclusions about an intervention or relationship. However, a meta-analysis can be only as good as the separate studies included in the analysis. Understanding and evaluating the research in giftedness, talent, and creativity are difficult tasks. Carolyn Callahan and Tonya Moon provide a useful guide for accomplishing this task.

Research on Giftedness, Creativity, and Talent

Reva Friedman-Nimz, Brenna O'Brien, and Bruce Frey studied publication trends related to the topics of gifted, creativity, talent, gifted and disabled, and gifted and disadvantaged by decade from the 1960s through the 1990s. They reported a major decrease in the percentage of quantitative research articles in educational, psychological, and special education journals over these decades (1960s = 62.3%, 1990s = 18.1%). Over this same period they observed a small increase in the percentage of qualitative research articles (from 14% to 20.5%). The major increase during this period was in the percentage of program description articles (1960s = 2.6%, 1990s = 37.8%). Thus, the issue is less whether one research paradigm (i.e., quantitative or qualitative) is replacing another, but more whether research is being supplanted by descriptions of untested procedures and programs. In 1990, Kyle Carter and H. Lee Swanson published an article examining the most frequently cited gifted journal articles since the Marland Report of 1972. They concluded from their review that information on gifted education was commonly unsupported by research and theory. Contributing to this problem is the lack of consensus on definitions and the tendency to develop new models rather that validate and refine existing models.

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