P. Alex Linley & Susan Harrington

We welcome John Rowan's response to our article (Linley & Harrington, 2005), but must confess some bemusement as well. John describes the ‘terrifying devotion to empiricist methods’ which he sees as characterising positive psychology, and which we do not mention in our article (all 862 words of it!). John then takes the opportunity, in the remainder of his reply, of rebuking the content of the Handbook of Positive Psychology (Snyder & Lopez, 2002) for the way in which its content is largely structured around quantitative, psychometric assessment of the various constructs included. A valid point, many people may agree, and one which may arguably be traced to the Lockean empiricist tradition within American (and British) psychology described by Gordon Allport (1955), and contrasted with the continental European tradition and its greater concern with thought and theory (see May, 1994). However, as we shall go on to show, we have not swallowed positive psychology ‘hook, line and sinker’ as John suggests - in fact, probably quite the opposite.

For example, our theoretical perspectives on positive psychology have emphasised the fundamental assumptions that we hold (Linley & Harrington, 2005; Linley & Joseph, 2004a), and how these influence our research and practice - hardly something likely to be found within the work of devotees of the empiricist method. In our own empirical work, both generally and on positive psychology specifically, you will not find a ‘terrifying devotion to empiricist methods’ - far from it. Susan Harrington recently completed a qualitative project that had run for over 10 months, examining perceptions of bullying in the workplace (see www.potenthos.com for a summary of this research). She interviewed and transcribed 20 participants, and analysed their responses thematically using template analysis. Alex Linley’s current work is also characterised by a range of quantitative and qualitative methodologies. For example, his work on the identification of psychological strengths is based on naturalistic observation, followed up by exploratory conversations with strengths exemplars. His work on implicit theories of personal responsibility is based on the analysis of people’s responses to the question, ‘What do you understand by the term ‘personal responsibility?’ And his work on coaching excellence asks people, among other things, ‘What do you consider are the characteristics/ attributes of an excellent coach?’ Not a Likert scale in sight! (But yes, you will find them elsewhere in some of the work we do.)

Turning to our broader work in positive psychology, this is arguably best represented by the edited volume Positive Psychology in Practice (Linley & Joseph, 2004b). Look therein and you will see chapters dedicated to historical, philosophical and epistemological perspectives on positive psychology (Jørgensen & Nafstad, 2004), integrations between Carl Rogers’ person-centred theory and positive psychology (Joseph & Linley, 2004), existential approaches to positive psychology (including references to Heidegger & May; Bretherton & Ørner, 2004), and the qualitative analysis of the subjective experiences of people with varying disabilities (Delle Fave & Massimini, 2004). If you turn to the last chapter, you’ll even find a section entitled ‘Positive psychology and the limits of empirical science’ (Linley & Joseph, 2004a) that explicitly argues for the value of subjective experience and the merit of qualitative methodologies, citing papers from the Journal of Humanistic Psychology. John, we agree with you! And clearly, we haven’t avoided ‘the challenge which is offered by a positive approach to psychology,’ as we hope we have demonstrated here, and as a consideration of our forthcoming overview article on positive psychology should amply indicate further (see Linley, Joseph, Harrington & Wood, in press).

But let’s also be clear that qualitative methodologies are not the only good way of conducting research. There is a place for quantitative, statistical analysis, even based on self-report questionnaires. The debate continues on the triangulation of qualitative and quantitative methods, and although we acknowledge the different epistemological and ontological assumptions of these approaches, we argue that it is misleading to assume that they are mutually exclusive. An appropriate combination may enhance productive and practically applicable research through complementary methods of data collection, analysis and interpretation, depending on the overall purpose of the research.

We suspect that one of the cores issues here is the disjunction between the needs of the psychological scientist (e.g. academic) and the needs of the psychological practitioner (e.g. coach). Academic pressures dictate publication in premier research journals, which in turn demand large Ns and tight experimental, statistical methods. The result is nomothetic research that may generalise across people, but loses the subtle idiographic nuances that are often valued by the practitioner. Practitioners are interested in findings that they can apply, immediately and appropriately, in their work. This demands an idiographic approach that offers great depth about that individual, but is arguably not generalisable more broadly. The two agendas are divergent, leading to the much lamented academic-practitioner divide.

John argues for coaching psychology ‘to do better than this, and to adopt a more humanistic way of doing research.’ Indeed, such idiographic approaches would likely serve the coaching practitioner well, and we support this call. But let us also recognise that the marginalisation of humanistic psychology within the academic world has often left it without a voice, no matter whether we, as individuals, subscribe to and support its central tenets. Thus, in closing, we suggest that coaching psychology can best prosper through the appropriate use of both qualitative and quantitative methodologies. To lock out one or the other is a sad betrayal of the researcher’s repertoire, which would be better served by a methodological eclecticism guided by the needs of the research question.

Address for correspondence
P. Alex Linley
School of Psychology,
Henry Wellcome Building,
University of Leicester,
Lancaster Road, Leicester, LE1 9HN.
E-mail: PAL8@le.ac.uk

Allport, G.W. (1955). Becoming: Basic considerations for a psychology of personality. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Bretherton, R. & Ørner, R. (2004). Positive psychology and psychotherapy: An existential approach. In P.A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp.420-430). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Delle Fave, A. & Massimini, F. (2004). Bringing subjectivity into focus: Optimal experiences, life themes, and person-centered rehabilitation. In P.A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp.581-597). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.

Jørgensen, I.S. & Nafstad, H.E. (2004). Positive psychology: Historical, philosophical and epistemological perspectives. In P.A. Linley & S. Joseph (Eds.), Positive psychology in practice (pp.15-34). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley.