Ontologies, Epistemologies, and Social Science: Philosophy of Social Science Meets Social Science Research

Many writers on family science methodology have insisted that there are problematic ontological and epistemological choices that family researchers must make explicit in their research. This discussion is too often framed as a holistic choice between exclusive alternatives. Family research work at different levels of the theoretical system within a study, from highly abstract theoretical orientations through hypotheses to data or from concrete ethnographic data through codes and categories to situated theory. I ask whether current research methods for those transitions may be already been designed so as to resolve many of the potential problems of ontology and epistemology.

Reopening a Can of Words: Conducting Secondary Analysis with Qualitative Data

Qualitative Secondary Data Analysis remains severely underutilized in the field of HDFS and the wider social sciences within the US. In this paper, we will revisit the topic of using qualitative data for secondary analysis, exploring complications and possibilities. With few exceptions (e.g., Radina & Downs, 2005), little discussion exists about the use of qualitative data as secondary analysis within HDFS. In response to this deficit, while engaging with the wider debates of qualitative secondary data analysis, we will bring into focus the importance and complications of secondary qualitative data analysis, and share examples of how to do it.