RESEARCH PARADIGMS, VALUES, AND SPOUSE ABUSE

This article invites dialogue on qualitative research strategies for u nderstanding the social contextual and subjective complexities of inte rpersonal violence. The epistemological assumptions and practical chal lenges of qualitative methods are contrasted with traditional quantita tive approaches. The authors assert that (a) the differences between t he two approaches are not paradigmatic, in the Kuhnian sense of scient ific revolutions; (b) there are important links, yet no necessary conn ections, between a feminist ethos in the social sciences and qualitati ve methods; (c) both qualitative and quantitative methodologists wish to increase the credibility of research findings, and may benefit from conceptual cross-fertilization; and (d) questions of values and polit ics in research on spouse abuse cannot be reduced to questions of meth odology. Throughout, the article advocates both methodological diversi ty and rigor in the effort to understand spousal violence.