How Experts Reach Their Conclusions

Researchers make distinctions between qualitative and quantitative methods. This chapter describes how research on offspring is designed and considers how experts reach their conclusions and why this may result in disagreement. Much pioneering research in psychology has consisted of case studies that were in-depth analyses of a few individuals. The data were gathered using unstructured, in-depth interviews of unknown reliability. In contrast to qualitative methods, researchers using quantitative methods attempt to assess the behavior of large numbers of people by counting behaviors or by using measures that produce numerical scores. Considerable research has made use of the "father-absence paradigm," which compares groups of father-absent and father-present offspring. The father-absence paradigm produced results showing that, on the average, offspring from divorced families differ from those of other families. The group comparison design implies that the cause of these differences is the structure of the family.