Deduction or Induction?

To Collis and Hussey (2009), “deductive research” describes the development and testing of conceptual frameworks and the process of moving from general laws to specific conclusions. Deductive logic advocates starting with a conceptual framework that explains, at least partially, the phenomenon of interest (Maylor and Blackmon, 2005). Deduction proceeds to test informed conjecture. Any experiment employing a “test” enacts deductivist ontology. Data collection via survey is a typical deductivist protocol: survey content is built from pre-existing theory; the survey acquires data to test that theory (using significance tests); generalization of findings to a population follows.

Inductivists seek to “explore, discover, understand, and delineate phenomena according to their aspects” (Farquhar, 2012, p.19). Inductivism is common in case study research, which is typically qualitative. The researcher generates theory from data by detecting patterns within it (Maylor and Blackmon, 2005). Inductive methods are exploratory and therefore usually coherent with the objectives of qualitative research. Phenomena that exist in a vacuum of theory are prime material for inductivist research (Eisenhardt and Graebner, 2007).