Challenging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide: Explorations in Case-focused Causal Analysis

by Barry Cooper, Judith Glaesser, Roger Gomm, Martyn Hammersley

Overview

An exploration of case-focused methods as a means of bridging the quantitative-qualitative divide and the key methodological issues.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781441171443
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	05/10/2012
Series:	Continuum Research Methods , #1
Pages:	288
Product dimensions:	9.30(w) x 6.10(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Barry Cooper is Emeritus Professor of Education at Durham University, UK. From 2004-2007, he was co-editor of the British Educational Research Journal.

Judith Glaesser is Lecturer in the School of Education at Durham University, UK

Roger Gomm, now retired, was Lecturer in Health and Welfare at The Open University, UK. He has a long experience of ethnographic research in both the UK and internationally, and of bespoke evaluation research.

Martyn Hammersley is Professor of Educational and Social Research in the Centre for Childhood, Development and Learning at the Open University, UK.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Part I: Problems with Quantitative and Qualitative Research
1. What's Wrong with Quantitative Research?
2. Quantitative Research on Meritocracy: The Problem of Inference from Outcomes to Opportunities
3. Qualitative Causal Analysis: Grounded Theorising and the Qualitative Survey
4. Qualitative Research and the Fallacies of Composition and Division: The Case of Ethnic Inequalities in Educational Achievement
Part II: Exploring Case-Focused Approaches to Causal Analysis
5. Set Theoretic versus Correlational Methods: the Case of Ability and Educational Achievement
6. Creating Typologies: Comparing Fuzzy Qualitative Comparative Analysis with Fuzzy Cluster Analysis
7. Analytic Induction versus Qualitative Comparative Analysis
Conclusion
References
Index

Editorial Reviews

Highly Commended - Society for Educational Studies Annual Book Prize 2013
The Society for Educational Studies

This book does three important things. It provides a useful account of how the qualitative-quantitative divide in research methods arose and became entrenched, it sets out the various reasons why we need to move beyond this divide, and it offers a vision and a demonstration of how this can be done using an approach that combines a focus on cases with the search for the causes of the social phenomena under investigation. It combines philosophical discussion with empirical illustration in an accessible way that will make readers reconsider their ideas about how to deal with depth and breadth in social research.

From the Publisher