Research Methods in the Social Sciences features chapters that cover a wide range of concepts, methods, and theories. Each chapter begins with an introduction to a method, using real-world examples from a wide range of academic disciplines, before discussing the benefits and limitations of the approach, its current status in academic practice, and finally providing tips and advice on when and how to apply the method in research. The text covers both well-established concepts and emerging ideas, such as big data and network analysis, for qualitative and quantitative research methods.
Rethinking Social Inquiry (RSI) is a key turning point in a long arc of development and contestation within and between qualitative and quantitative research methods in the social sciences. It builds on and further advances three important trends in these research methods: a renaissance in qualitative methods in the last decade, the continuing refinement of statistical and formal methods, and a nascent convergence of methodologists of all kinds behind a more pluralistic vision of methodology that includes growing interest in multimethod work. RSI achieves these contributions not just substantively but symbolically, bringing together leading methodologists in the quantitative and qualitative traditions, most notably the editors themselves, to address the tough issue of what would constitute shared standards for good research regardless of method. Although much of the initial commentary on RSI will no doubt focus on its critiques of Designing Social Inquiry, I suspect that in the long run the subtitle of RSI (“Diverse Tools, Shared Standards”) better captures what will be its lasting contribution to the social sciences.
Some in the social sciences argue that the same logic applies to both qualitative and quantitative research methods. This book demonstrates that these two paradigms constitute different cultures, each internally coherent yet marked by contrasting norms, practices, and toolkits. The book identifies and discusses major differences between these two traditions that touch nearly every aspect of social science research, including design, goals, causal effects and models, concepts and measurement, data analysis, and case selection. Although focused on the differences between qualitative and quantitative research, the book also seeks to promote toleration, exchange, and learning by enabling scholars to think beyond their own culture and see an alternative scientific worldview. The book is written in an easily accessible style and features a host of real-world examples to illustrate methodological points.
A quarter century ago, in 1987, Charles C. Ragin published The Comparative Method, introducing a new method to the social sciences called Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA). QCA is a comparative case-oriented research approach and collection of techniques based on set theory and Boolean algebra, which aims to combine some of the strengths of qualitative and quantitative research methods. Since its launch in 1987, QCA has been applied extensively in the social sciences. This review essay first sketches the origins of the ideas behind QCA. Next, the main features of the method, as presented in The Comparative Method, are introduced. A third part focuses on the early applications. A fourth part presents early criticisms and subsequent innovations. A fifth part then focuses on an era of further expansion in political science and presents some of the main applications in the discipline. In doing so, this paper seeks to provide insights and references into the origin and development of QCA, a non-technical introduction to its main features, the path travelled so far, and the diversification of applications.
The article takes up the discussion about qualitative and quantitative research methods as ostensibly incopatible approaches to empirical studies - an understanding which is broadly disseminated within a range of academic disciplines. The authors trouble this dualistic understanding through concrete discussions of methodological approaches conducted by as well qualitatively as quantitatively oriented reseachers. It is argued, that difference and potential incompatibility must be seen in relation to the metatheoretical basis for the studies and thereby in relation to the research ambitions, in which the studies are involved.