Qualitative Theory and Method: What is Abductive Reasoning and What Does it Offer?

While abductive reasoning was formally introduced into the philosophy literature early in the 20th century, it has only recently received much interest by social scientists, especially from those who practice qualitative methods. In contrast to induction and deduction, abductive reasoning is often simply defined as reasoning to be the best explanation. C.S. Peirce introduced abduction within the pragmatic philosophical tradition. While qualitative research is often associated with inductive reason (using particular observations to establish a generalization), a recent qualitative literature (Timmermans & Tavory, 2012) advances greater relevance and consideration of theory in qualitative research especially theory building through abductive reasoning processes. This presentation will briefly review the concepts of induction and deduction from a qualitative theory building lens, followed by a more in-depth discussion of abduction. This discussion will address the origin and meaning(s) of concept of abductive reasoning and its potential application and role in qualitative research theory building. Moreover, we will introduce the challenges and common critiques of abductive reasoning, which is viewed between the extremes of “nearly impossible to effectively apply” to an “obvious routine skill of everyday thinking processes.” The potential benefits and challenges of abduction to qualitative research will be introduced and discussed