ABSTRACT
Whereas epistemology deals with the question of what knowledge is, methodology asks how valid knowledge can be acquired. Methodology is thus the study of methods (Mingers, 2001b), and it analyses the different methods used in research. There are numerous attempts to collect and classify research methods. I am referring here to ways of acquiring valid knowledge, which needs to be distinguished from structured approaches to IS development or data modelling. (For a review of the philosophical basics of such methodologies, see Hirschheim et al., 1995.) Jenkins (1985), for example, identifies 13 ways. The most important divide between methods is that between quantitative and qualitative methods. There has been an intensive discussion between proponents of the two sides in IS research for at least the past 20 years. I will not recount this discussion here. Suffice it to say that numbers are signs, which carry meaning in a particular context, just like letters, words, and sentences. All signs require interpretation in order to be understood, which renders the perceived opposition between quantitative and qualitative fairly uninteresting.
