Abstract
The aim of this chapter is to open up and explore a little-researched area of statistics education. We investigate how academics and postgraduate students use quantitative approaches to carry out research in creative and qualitative disciplines, such as music, design and art. We describe our method of interviewing 19 participants by email, indicate respondents’ research contexts and the role that statistical techniques played in their research. We discuss how interviewees familiarised themselves with quantitative methods and what assistance they received and would have liked to receive. We investigate the researchers’ epistemological views underpinning their methodological approaches. Finally, we develop an interpretive tool for situating research approaches where the home discipline is not usually associated with quantitative methods. The findings raise important issues about the training and institutional support of researchers in these fields.
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We gratefully acknowledge the time and insights of the participants in this project.
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Gordon, S., Reid, A., Petocz, P. (2014). Researchers’ Use of Statistics in Creative and Qualitative Disciplines. In: MacGillivray, H., Phillips, B., Martin, M. (eds) Topics from Australian Conferences on Teaching Statistics. Springer Proceedings in Mathematics & Statistics, vol 81. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-0603-1_20
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