It is an interesting
moment to write Progress in Human Geography’s first report on qualitative
methods. In one sense, it suggests these methods have, at long last, arrived
and been accepted as established approaches. That this is an overdue
recognition needs little emphasizing when surveying the number of articles
drawing upon, at least in part, qualitative material. However, a less
encouraging omen is the recent column in the UK Economic and Social Research
Council’s Social Sciences, penned by the chief executive (Marshall, 2001). In
it he asserts: ‘British universities and colleges are not producing
quantitatively competent social scientists in sufficient numbers.’ Although he
does not mention what ‘non-quantitative’ research is doing, he discusses a
series of remedial measures – such as compulsory training in statistics,
prioritized awards for quantitative PhD projects, tied studentships and
specialist research centres. To paraphrase Spike Milligan’s comment on army
training, the attitude appears to be – if someone dies when you hang them, keep
hanging them until they get used to it. It is already feeding through into new
postgraduate Research Training Guidelines. The problem we are told is acute,
though the evidence presented is scant and, moreover, ironically seems to
consist of unanalysed, qualitative reports from meetings with civil servants:
‘Failure to [remedy the shortage] is likely to result in Britain falling behind
the rest of Europe, both in the provision of talented quantitative social
researchers, and the ability to design public policy on a reliable evidence
base.’ It seems to imply that qualitative research has not only arrived but
gone too far. Within geography, the last decade has undoubtedly seen an
expansion in qualitative work both in terms of the types of work and the topics
addressed. So in this first report I want to spend some time looking at the
range of topics, then beginning to look at the range of methods that might be
covered. I want to suggest that we have moved from a period when papers were
prefaced with legitimations of qualitative work to a time when we are seeing
debates within qualitative methods over establishing orthodox approaches and
standards. I want to conclude this report by pointing towards some gaps.