Qualitative and quantitative analyses of psychological distress: methodological complementarity and ontological incommensurability.

Publisher: Sage Publications Country of Publication: United States NLM ID: 9202144 Publication Model: Print Cited Medium: Print ISSN: 1049-7323 (Print) Linking ISSN: 10497323 NLM ISO Abbreviation: Qual Health Res

Publication: Thousand Oaks, CA : Sage Publications
Original Publication: Newbury Park, CA : Sage Publications, c1991-

Psychological Tests*; Ethnicity/*psychology ; Psychometrics/*methods ; Stress, Psychological/*psychology; Factor Analysis, Statistical ; Humans ; Language ; Quebec ; Reproducibility of Results

Rigorous qualitative and quantitative methodologies have been used for the development of a multidimensional scale dedicated to the measurement of psychological distress. A comparison between the idioms of distress or the cultural forms through which French Quebecois express their distress (qualitative constructs) and the nonorthogonal factors derived from explanatory and higher order factorial analyses (quantitative constructs) illustrates the possibilities of complementarity between qualitative and quantitative approaches. The comparison shows that these two operationalizations of the concept of psychological distress are founded on incommensurable representations of distress. This article concludes that this representational dilemma of distress as a lived language or as an empirical reified entity leads to an ontological and a teleological incommensurability.

Date Created: 20000818 Date Completed: 20000720 Latest Revision: 20211203

20221213

10.1177/104973200129118426

10947485