Citation

Spector PE. Occup. Health Sci. 2017; 1(1-2): 11-27.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2017, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s41542-017-0001-5

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

This paper makes a case for the necessity of inductive and abductive approaches to research in occupational health science and the broader organizational sciences. Three forms of scientific inference are described: induction (exploratory research that generalizes from observations), abduction (deriving explanations for observations), and deduction (confirmatory research that tests theory-derived hypotheses). It is argued that the current deductive exclusiveness in the major journals of many fields has created unintended challenges to research integrity of confirmation bias, p-hacking, HARKing, and the chrysalis effect. Recommendations are given for writing and reviewing research papers that adopt an inductive and/or abductive approach.

Language: en