Unintended consequences are a natural part of conversation - asides, reminders, etc. :) I can understand both the suggestion from you that folks might hesitate at something too statistical and Barry's critique of the idea that someone would be only a quant or qual person. Partly, it's a disciplinary difference: You're in Communications (and I've taught methods courses in such departments, where quant skills are narrower) and he's in Sociology (my own discipline, rife with riffs about qual vs quant). But to the extent there's tension between the two ideas, you win: Reviewers should have a level of expertise in what they're reviewing that exceeds the baseline literacy level Barry thinks all Soc students should have. -eg -----Original Message----- From: Air-L [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Deller, Ruth A Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2014 2:33 AM To: 'aoir list' Subject: Re: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that I think I may have accidentally started something I didn't mean to! When I mentioned stats as an example in my email to the list a couple of days ago, it wasn't my intention to start a quantitative vs qualitative debate, I was just using it as a (perhaps extreme) example of how you might be assigned papers to review that are out of your comfort zone - really as a response to Jill's suggestion of people identifying their disciplinary backgrounds in the submissions process because she discussed wishing she'd been able to review more Humanities papers and submit in a format more comfortable to Humanities scholars -it was never meant to be a statement about quant vs qual vs mixed-methods or anything like that! Ruth -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Ellis Godard Sent: 07 May 2014 23:40 To: 'Barry Wellman'; 'aoir list' Subject: Re: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that I'm less interested in the methods folks employ than in their epistemology about their methods. Many ideas - that numbers are bad, that science is evil, that "positivism" is dead, etc. - are pollutive nonsense that perpetuate a qual/quant distinction that's partly spurious. Numbers are great, as is exploratory work that can't quite yet be subjected to quantification. Ethnographers can count things, and we can count things about ethnographies. Kumbaya. -eg -----Original Message----- From: air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org [mailto:air-l-bounces@listserv.aoir.org] On Behalf Of Barry Wellman Sent: Wednesday, May 07, 2014 3:09 PM To: aoir list Subject: [Air-L] qual/quant and all that I am disappointed in the implicit assumption that folks are either qual or quant. When I had influence in the Toronto Sociology dept, I helped lead the way to ensure all grad students took a basic stats course and a basic ethnography course. They don't have to use both, but they have to be literate readers of both, and not shy away from use in fear or ignorance. I continue to think it is the only way forward for serious IR scholarship Barry Wellman, who was doing "mixed methods" before it was called that. _______________________________________________________________________ NetLab FRSC INSNA Founder Faculty of Information (iSchool) 611 Bissell Building 140 St. George St. University of Toronto Toronto Canada M5S 3G6 http://www.chass.utoronto.ca/~wellman twitter: @barrywellman NSA/CSEC: Canadian and American citizen NETWORKED:The New Social Operating System. Lee Rainie & Barry Wellman MIT Press http://amzn.to/zXZg39 Print $14 Kindle $16 Old/NewCyberTimes http://bit.ly/c8N9V8 ________________________________________________________________________ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/ _______________________________________________ The Air-L@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/