Most research on psychosocial issues in cancer follows a quantitative strategy, using standard instruments and statistical analyses, yet researchers sometimes pay less attention to matters of validity. The authors propose a research strategy that combines qualitative and quantitative methods. The qualitative method is used to discover variables and define hypothesis and thus strengthen validity, and quantitative techniques are used to establish statistical significance and thus generalizability. The usefulness of the strategy is illustrated with examples from noncancer and cancer research, and some practical issues concerning the use of the less familiar qualitative techniques are discussed.
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Waxler‐Morrison et al. (1995) studied this question.