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The DOI matches its Crossref record; 4 of the 4 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.

Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education

Maxwell, Joseph A.·2004·Educational Researcher

Abstract

A National Research Council report, Scientific Research in Education, has elicited considerable criticism from the education research community, but this criticism has not focused on a key assumption of the report—its Humean, regularity conception of causality. It is argued that this conception, which also underlies other arguments for “scientifically-based research,” is narrow and philosophically outdated, and leads to a misrepresentation of the nature and value of qualitative research for causal explanation. An alternative, realist approach to causality is presented that supports the scientific legitimacy of using qualitative research for causal investigation, reframes the arguments for experimental methods in educational research, and can support a more productive collaboration between qualitative and quantitative researchers.

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Metadata

Authors
Maxwell, J. A.
Venue
Educational Researcher
Published
2004-03
Volume
33
Issue
2
Pages
3-11
ISSN
  • 0013-189X (ISSN-L)
  • 1935-102X
OpenAlex
W2037302630
Cited by
778
References
4
FWCI
121.90
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.3102/0013189x033002003
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Maxwell, J. A. (2004). Causal Explanation, Qualitative Research, and Scientific Inquiry in Education. Educational Researcher. https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189x033002003

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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).

Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.