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Outdated Views of Qualitative Methods: Time to Move On

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2017

David Collier ,
Henry E. Brady  and
Jason Seawright
David Collier*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 210 Barrows Hall #1950, Berkeley, CA 94720
Henry E. Brady
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, 210 Barrows Hall #1950, Berkeley, CA 94720. e-mail: hbrady@berkeley.edu
Jason Seawright
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Northwestern University, Scott Hall, 601 University Place, Evanston, IL 60208. e-mail: j-seawright@northwestern.edu
*
e-mail: dcollier@berkeley.edu (corresponding author)
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Abstract

Both qualitative and quantitative research routinely fall short, producing misleading causal inferences. Because these weaknesses are in part different, we are convinced that multimethod strategies are productive. Each approach can provide additional leverage that helps address shortcomings of the other. This position is quite distinct from that of Beck, who believes that the two types of analysis cannot be adjoined. We review examples of adjoining that Beck dismisses, based on what we see as his outdated view of qualitative methods. By contrast, we show that these examples demonstrate how qualitative and quantitative analysis can work together.

Type
Research Article
Information
Political Analysis , Volume 18 , Issue 4 , Autumn 2010 , pp. 506 - 513
Copyright
Copyright © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology 

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Footnotes

Authors' note: This response is dedicated to the statistician David A. Freedman, who thought it was late in the game for quantitative researchers still to be skeptical about qualitative methods. We received valuable suggestions and assistance from Tara Buss, F. Daniel Hidalgo, Jody LaPorte, and especially Christopher Chambers-Ju, Maria Gould, and Miranda Yaver.

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