ition of measurement. Stam argued that my position would lead to confusion in the field. He characterized it as calling for an'' arbitrary'' process of assigning numbers to events, asked us to'' imagine a world where we each developed our own measures of length or temperature,'' and cited the multitude of personality measures that exist as an example of how things have, in fact, already gotten out of hand. I do not find these arguments convincing. For one thing, any concern about diversity of viewpoints surely holds at least as clearly for qualitative research, which Stam supports. Moreover, while I agree with Stam that cooperation in the field is desirable, I do not believe my position works against it. My second point about interpretation is relevant here. I am not advocating inquiry that is interpretive in the sense that it is based on however an investigator happens to think about things. As I suggested in my position paper, practices of inquiry are relative to investigators 'prereflective understanding, but they are not arbitrary. Interpretive inquiry does not lead to a problematic free-for-all by any means. Only certain ways of proceeding will prove to be useful for people who are participants in a shared world of practical activities (see Sugarman & Martin, 2005). Furthermore, investigators can make their procedures public and cooperate in using one set of measures when that seems useful in a given situation, even if they can never fully explicate the procedures because they always refer beyond themselves to the background of the shared world. It is true that there is likely to be a diversity of approaches to any given issue, but this is desirable. Diversity in measures and other research procedures often is a function of differences in research goals (see Westerman, 2004, p. 137). Fundamentally, diversity in approaches is both good and necessary because investigators in psychology address issues that do not have final, determinate answers.
3. How is interpretive quantitative research helpful?
Even if employing interpretive quantitative measures does not have the downside of leading to a confusing free-for-all, we can still ask, along with Stam, whether there is something to be gained by using numbers in our investigations. As I pointed out in my position paper, I agree with researchers who embrace positivism about some of the useful features of quantitative measures and quantitative research procedures in general (eg, they enhance our ability to investigate group differences without being unduly influenced by dramatic instances of a phenomenon). I want to mark out an additional basis for appreciating what quantitative methods have to offer.
In my position paper, I argued that quantitative research procedures can make a special contribution because they require us to concretely specify our ideas about psychological phenomena. I endorsed suc...
