Qualitative and quantitative: the yin and the yang or the light and the dark sides of medical education?

not exclusively) qualitative. Of the last five winners of the ASME young researcher awards, four have been qualitative or strongly qualitative in nature, the other was action research with a strong qualitative component. I worry, however, that the pendulum has swung too far and others may share aspects of my concerns [13]. Yes, we are building theory but the value of a good theory is that it enables predictions which can be tested. Some of that testing requires measurement. We need research which seeks to quantify whether a theory-based intervention has the effects which were predicted and whether that difference is worth the candle. We need to know whether our theory building actually makes differences which matter to educators on the ground, to our learners who have entrusted us with their future, and to their patients in the future. As Yogi Berra may have said, ‘In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.’ The current predominance of qualitative research in medical education contrasts with the discourse in medical research though the 1990s. Then, those who championed qualitative research were working to establish the credibility of their chosen paradigm and to shift the perception that their work was unscientific and lacking in rigour [14, 15]. They were riding a wave: influential guidelines were soon published [16, 17] and since updated [18]. Now mixed methods research combining qualitative and quantitative approaches is commonplace in health technology assessment and health services research and few research programmes can expect funding unless they bring the gaze of both to the problem being examined. Quantitative research in medical education is important and will continue to be important. The descriptive work of Papadakis [19] and Tamblyn [20−22] has been hugely influential. These enormously painstaking pieces of ground breaking work hint at the potential that lies within the Research and scholarship in medical education have had a poor press, perhaps deservedly so. Our work had been criticized as too often atheoretical, [1] methodologically weak, [1–4] irrelevant [4] and inaccessible to educators at the coal face [2]. It is too often underfunded, [1, 2, 5, 6] and we have been described as institutionally and professionally insular [1, 4]. In many ways our response to these charges has been admirable. We have had clearly articulated calls to enhance the quality of our outputs from leaders in the field, [7] trenchant debate [3, 8–10] and measured contributions as to exactly what ‘quality’ in research into medical education might be [11, 12]. And what advice do we, the older or more experienced members of the medical education community, now give those who seek to replace us? Or perhaps, we should ask what do they hear? I believe, to paraphrase the adage from the 1850s ‘Go west young man, go west and grow up with the country’, that what they hear is ‘Go qualitative new colleague, go qualitative!’ Like the advice given in ninteenth century North America, this has much to commend it: we have wide prairies to explore and understand and populate with ideas and room in which to make a reputation. And this is happening. A search of MEDLINE shows that, since 2000, the number of papers with ‘qualitative’ but not ‘quantitative’ in their title and abstract in Medical Education, Medical Teacher, BMC Medical Education and Academic Medicine outnumbered whose with the obverse (‘quantitative’ and not ‘qualitative’ in the title and abstract) by 6.5–1. The research of many of our superstars is strongly (albeit