In Defense of Quantitative Methods: Using the “Master’s Tools” to Promote Social Justice

By Kevin Cokley, Germine H. Awad. 2013

101 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Empiricism in the form of quantitative methods has sometimes been used by researchers to thwart human welfare and social justice. Some of the ugliest moments in the history of psychology were a result of researchers using quantitative methods to legitimize and codify the prejudices of the day. This has resulted in the view that quantitative methods are antithetical to the pursuit of social justice for oppressed and marginalized groups. While the ambivalence toward quantitative methods by some is understandable given their misuse by some researchers, we argue that quantitative methods are not inherently oppressive. Quantitative methods can be liberating if used by multiculturally competent researchers and scholar-activists committed to social justice. Examples of best practices in social justice oriented quantitative research are reviewed.

Subfields: Clinical Psychology, General Psychology, Social Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/7b2c83c29d976c97557ce1b2ff8478ef4061eab9

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In Clinical Psychology

In General Psychology

In Social Psychology

Citations in the corpus

The Value of Mixed Methods Designs to Social Justice Research in Counseling and Psychology (2013, methodology): “…qualitative methods (Lyons, Bike, Johnson, & Bethea, 2012; Ojeda, Flores, Rosales Meza, & Morales, 2012; Lyons et al., 2013), while also providing “hard” (numerical and inferential) evidence that may appeal to the larger political and funding sources influencing the community (Cokley & Awad, 2013).”