scholarly journals Overcoming methodological dogmatism in social sciences: Triangulation, multimethod, and mixed methods

Sociologija ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 63 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-25
Author(s):  
Vladan Vidicki ◽  
Snezana Stojsin
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Research Problem ◽  
Quantitative Methodology ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

For the longest time, quantitative and qualitative methods have been considered opposing and mutually exclusive categories within the methodology of social science. This is best showcased by the conflicts arising between the proponents of these differing approaches - conflicts that are often characterized by an air of methodological dogmatism. The term ?methodological dogmatism? refers to the conviction of researchers in the superiority of their own approach, while delegitimizing any other. The main purpose of this paper is to outline the contemporary theoretical possibities of overcoming said dogmatism, and the three most prevalent approaches (triangulation, multimethod and mixed methods) will be presented accordingly. The goal is to identify the continuity of the ideas referring to the integration of qualitative and quantitative methodology, as well as to highlight the characterstics, advantages and drawbacks of each method. The paper concludes that the choice of method should be based on the nature of the research problem at hand, and that the combining of methods can serve as a useful tool for understanding and encompassing the full complexity of phenomena which are at the heart of social research.

Mixed Methods

2021 ◽  
pp. 169-174
Author(s):  
Manfredi Valeriani ◽  
Vicki L. Plano Clark
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Mixed Methods Research ◽  
Research Study ◽  
Central Idea ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

This chapter examines mixed-methods research, which is an approach that involves the integration of quantitative and qualitative methods at one or more stages of a research study. The central idea behind mixed-methods research is that the intentional combination of numeric-based methods with narrative-based methods can best provide answers to some research questions. The ongoing attempts to construct a simple and common conceptualization of mixed-methods provide a good indicator of the status of mixed-methods itself. mixed-methods research has emerged as a formalized methodology well suited to addressing complex problems, and is currently applied throughout the social sciences and beyond. Nowadays, researchers interested in combining quantitative and qualitative methods can benefit from the growing knowledge about the epistemological foundations, essential considerations, and rigorous designs that have been advanced for mixed-methods research.

Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Social Research in Human Geography—An Impossible Mixture?

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-276 ◽  
Author(s):  
L J Philip
Keyword(s):  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Human Geography ◽  
Multiple Methods ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Qualitative Approaches ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

The author addresses the potential of a multiple-methods approach in human geography, an approach to social research which has received little explicit attention in the geographical literature to date. The relationship between epistemology and methodology is outlined, and the similarities and differences between quantitative and qualitative methods are described. Some problems surrounding subjectivity and objectivity in social research are also discussed. In addition, the relationship between methods and to whom the research is communicated is considered. It is hoped that the paper will stimulate future discussion both of the theoretical implications and of the practical use of a mixed-methods approach in human geography.

scholarly journals Social Science Methodologies for Studying Individuals' Responses in Human Issues in Horticulture Research

2000 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Candice A. Shoemaker ◽  
Paula Diane Relf ◽  
Virginia I. Lohr
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Common ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

Many of the research questions that have been posed regarding the effects of plants on people can only be answered using methodologies from the social sciences. Lack of familiarity with these methods and their underlying concepts has limited the role that horticulturists have taken in this research. Horticulturists, because of their particular sensitivity to the various aspects of plants and the nature of the ways that people interact with plants, must be involved in this type of research to generate the information that is needed by horticultural industries. This paper reviews many of the common methods that have been used in research on human issues in horticulture and presents examples of studies that have been conducted using these techniques. Quantitative and qualitative methods are discussed.

The next challenge: from mixed to merged methods

2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 329-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Giampietro Gobo
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Research Methods ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
New Methods ◽  
Single Instrument ◽  
Single Technique

Purpose – In social sciences, after having witnessed several “turns” (cognitive, linguistic, pragmatic, interactional), the authors observe the rise of the “qualitative turn”. Therefore quantitative research methods are not mainstream anymore. One effect of this rebalance between quality and quantity is the recent “resurgence” of mixed methods. However, a new challenge presses social research: creating new methods, which could combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single instrument, squeezing the advantages of both in a single technique. With the benefit of lowering the costs and making more consistent the findings. Some “merged” methods already exist and QROM could be a visionary laboratory. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – An overview of recent research on the spread and use of social research methods in different countries. Findings – In social sciences quantitative methods are not mainstream anymore. Research limitations/implications – The time has come for a further step in the direction of a full integration of qualitative and quantitative methods. Practical implications – Envisioning the future needs for creating new methods, which could combine both qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single instrument, squeezing the advantages of both in a single technique. With the benefit of lowering the costs and making more consistent the research findings. Some “merged” methods already exist and QROM could be a visionary laboratory. Social implications – The rise of “qualitative turn” in social sciences will change the power relations in academy and in the market research. New generations of researchers will bring social research back to the times of Chicago School, where qualitative research was dominated. Only posterity will know if this will be good or not. Originality/value – This brief paper envisions the need to go beyond the current “mixed” methods fashion in favour of full “merged” methods research.

scholarly journals Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Poverty: Taming the Tensions and Appreciating the Complementarities

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sulaiman Balarabe Kura
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Mixed Methods ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Science Research ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Reliable Data ◽  
Mixed Methods Approach ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Quantitative Approaches

There is a germane relationship between qualitative and quantitative approaches to social science research. The relationship is empirically and theoretically demonstrated by poverty researchers. The study of poverty, as argued in this article, is a study of both numbers and contextualities. This article provides a general overview of qualitative and quantitative approaches to poverty studies and argues that only a combination of the two approaches, where necessary, would provide a robust, rich and reliable data for researching issues of poverty. Hence, the contemporary drive towards a mixed methods approach in poverty research is not only welcomed but certainly timely as well. Thus, understanding ontological and epistemological paradigms about social sciences is imperative in dousing such tensions.

The Edwards' Report and the International Relations profession

1988 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 149-152 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Research Council ◽  
Social Research ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Social Science Community ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science Community

The Economic and Social Research Council recently published a Report commissioned from a committee chaired by Professor Edwards, a psychiatrist, so that the Council, and the social science community in general, might know what was good and bad in British social sciences, and where the promising future research opportunities lie over the next decade. Boldly called ‘Horizons and Opportunities in the Social Sciences’, the Report condensed the wisdom of social scientists, both British and foreign, and concludes with a broadly but not uncritically favourable picture of the British scene.

Introduction to the Special Issue “Causal Complexity and Qualitative Methods”

2006 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 223-226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary Goertz
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Quantitative Methods ◽  
The Other ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative Methods ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Empirical Social Science ◽  
Causal Complexity

This special issue of Political Analysis engages in a dialogue between qualitative and quantitative methods. It proposes that each has something to say to the other and more generally has a contribution to make to empirical social science.

The Quiet Resolution of the Science Wars

2021 ◽  
pp. 53-79
Author(s):  
Matt Grossmann
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Qualitative Methods ◽  
Rational Choice ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Rational Choice Theory ◽  
Choice Theory ◽  
Confirmation Bias ◽  
Frequentist Statistics ◽  
Science Wars ◽  
Quantitative And Qualitative Methods

The “science wars” were resolved surprisingly quietly. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, critics of science from humanities disciplines fought with scientists over the extent to which science is a social and biased process or a path to truth. Today, there are few absolute relativists or adherents of scientific purity and far more acknowledgment that science involves biased truth-seeking. Continuing (but less vicious) wars over Bayesian and frequentist statistics likewise ignore some key agreements: tests of scientific claims require clarifying assumptions and some way to account for confirmation bias, either by building it into the model or by establishing more severe tests for the sufficiency of evidence. This sedation was accompanied by shifts within social science disciplines. Debates over both simplistic models of human nature (especially over rational choice theory) and over what constituted proper quantitative and qualitative methods died down as nearly everyone became theoretically and methodologically pluralist in practice. I herald this evolution, pointing to its benefits in the topics we cover, the ideas we consider, the evidence we generate, and how we evaluate and integrate our knowledge.

Positivism in the social sciences

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Kincaid
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
Social Research ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Methodological Individualism ◽  
Main Function ◽  
Social Convention ◽  
The Social

Positivism originated from separate movements in nineteenth-century social science and early twentieth-century philosophy. Key positivist ideas were that philosophy should be scientific, that metaphysical speculations are meaningless, that there is a universal and a priori scientific method, that a main function of philosophy is to analyse that method, that this basic scientific method is the same in both the natural and social sciences, that the various sciences should be reducible to physics, and that the theoretical parts of good science must be translatable into statements about observations. In the social sciences and the philosophy of the social sciences, positivism has supported the emphasis on quantitative data and precisely formulated theories, the doctrines of behaviourism, operationalism and methodological individualism, the doubts among philosophers that meaning and interpretation can be scientifically adequate, and an approach to the philosophy of social science that focuses on conceptual analysis rather than on the actual practice of social research. Influential criticisms have denied that scientific method is a priori or universal, that theories can or must be translatable into observational terms, and that reduction to physics is the way to unify the sciences. These criticisms have undercut the motivations for behaviourism and methodological individualism in the social sciences. They have also led many to conclude, somewhat implausibly, that any standards of good social science are merely matters of rhetorical persuasion and social convention.

Social Sciences in Contemporary Turkey

1971 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 72-82
Author(s):  
Walter F. Weiker
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Science ◽  
Social Research ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Previous Article ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Time Space ◽  
Growing Body

In a previous article I sought to appraise the field of Turkish studies, for the most part among western (predominantly American) scholars (MESA Bulletin, Vol. 3, No. 3, October 15, 1969). To fill out the picture, it is appropriate to also view the state of social research among the rapidly growing body of Turkish teachers and researchers. This article is not, however, a direct parallel to others in the MESA “State of the Art” series, in that it is not basically bibliographical. Such a review would require far more time, space, and knowledge in depth of several other social science disciplines than is currently available to me, because despite the remarks made below about problems of definition, the quantity and technical sophistication of work by Turkish researchers is quite large and is growing rapidly. Furthermore, since most of the research referred to below is in Turkish, the number of persons to whom a bibliographic review might be useful is quite limited. Instead, I think it would be more interesting to MESA members and other American social scientists to examine the characteristics and problems of what is probably one of the most vigorous social science communities in the “developing” countries, with a view (among other things) to helping facilitate increased cooperation between Turkish and American scholars in our common endeavors of advancing the state of knowledge.

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