Qualitative and quantitative analyses of psychological distress: Methodological complementarity and ontological incommensurability

Rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies have been used for the development of a multidimensional scale dedicated to the measurement of psy chological distress. A comparison between the idioms of distress or the cul tural forms through which French Quebecois express their distress (qualitat ive constructs) and the nonorthogonal factors derived from explanatory and higher order factorial analyses (quantitative constructs) illustrates the p ossibilities of complementarity between qualitative and quantitative approa ches. The comparison shows that these two operationalizations of the concep t of psychological distress are founded on incommensurable representations of distress. This article concludes that this representational dilemma of d is tress as a lived language or as an empirical reified entity leads to an ontological and a teleological incommensurability.