Rigour and intuition in professional life

Rigour is not a characteristic of quantitative as distinct from qualitative research; both may be carried out with greater or less rigour. Intuition has a role in scientific work and, in turn, intuitive understanding needs to be open to systematic testing. Rigour and intuition interact in the research process, they are not in opposition. Similarly in applied work a finding cannot be taken from a textbook and applied to a situation without passing through the person of the researcher/practitioner. There it is modified by the researcher/practitioner's sense of the meaning of that finding and understanding of the context within which it is to be applied. Illustrations of these points include examples from evaluation research in hospitals where the Electronic Patient Record (EPR) was being implemented.