ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the accepted constructs of science and investigates the ways that ethnographic approaches accommodate them. Qualitative and quantitative data types, and the distinction between scientific and non-scientific investigations on the basis of data type, begin to blur when one considers that the categorization of any item as an item involves making qualitative distinctions. Quantitative methods attempt to minimize research bias by emphasizing the use of instruments for data collection and measurement, thereby eliminating the researcher's bias in both the data collection and analysis processes. Much of what anthropology does involves primary data as opposed to existing or secondary data Although health services research (HSR) uses primary data some of the time, in the beginning it relied heavily on secondary data and this is one reason for its quantitative or numerical focus.
