One in ten of the UK population use complementary medicine each year and 50% are lifetime users. The recent House of Lords’ Report has clearly defined a public need for further research into both safety and efficacy. The Department of Health research capacity building initiative is one of the first main responses to the Select Committee’s recommendations. We know that within this emerging field...

methodologies operate broadly within qualitative and/or quantitative paradigms. The simplest distinction between these two is that quantitative research methods involve enumeration, whereas qualitative research methods employ qualitative (non-numerical) judgements in exploration of the phenomena being studied. Behind this simple distinction lie deep philosophical differences. Quantitative resea...