Contingency Table: A Two-Way Bridge between Qualitative and Quantitative Methods

Combining qualitative and quantitative research methods in the same project allowed the authors to gain more in-depth knowledge as well as to achieve sharper data reduction and verification than would have been possible using only one approach. Qualitative data were obtained from in-depth interviews with thirteen founders of leading family businesses and published secondary data. The authors used qualitative computer software to codify founders’ values from the full transcriptions of their interviews. The resulting contingency table was the bridge to visually explore the relationship between codes (values) and primary documents (family firm's founders) using multidimensional scaling. The authors then used hierarchical clustering to form a taxonomy of founders. Finally, they returned to qualitative analysis and studied the association between founders’ values and family background for external validation of the taxonomy. © 2002, Sage Publications. All rights reserved.