Quantitative or Qualitative? A Content Analysis of Nordic Research in Tourism and Hospitality

Abstract

There is general consensus that the “master paradigm” in the social sciences, including the fields of tourism and hospitality, has been the quantitative or scientific method. The aim of this paper is to assess this proposition with respect to research conducted by investigators affiliated to tourism and hospitality institutions in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden. To this end, 125 articles authored by Nordic researchers in 19 different tourism and hospitality journals are content analysed. Based on this descriptive analysis, the articles are first classified according to their conceptual/empirical dimensions. Second, empirical research is divided into qualitative, quantitative and combined categories. In so doing, an overview is also provided of the data collection and analysis techniques employed. Additionally, by making use of accompanying memos, qualitative and quantitative studies are respectively examined according to the criteria of methodology and theory. The results indicate that investigations conducted by Nordic researchers reflect a similar pattern to that in the social sciences generally, to the extent that quantitative methods constitute the predominant approach, even though qualitative research has in the past two decades received increasing attention. The findings further suggest that the qualitative inquiries of Nordic research can generally be characterized as studies with low sophistication on methodological issues but with high theoretical awareness, whereas quantitative investigations represent the opposite trend.

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