The Practice of Multi-Method Research: Mixing Qualitative and Quantitative Methods (Methods for Social Inquiry)

Can interviews or a focus group improve the causal inferences drawn from experiments? Can quantitative text analysis help develop workflows as a qualitative scholar? Can we learn from a single case in a way that helps us with a statistical model? There is much to learn from the careful use of all these methodological combinations. The Practice of Multi-Method Research is aimed at practical researchers: from undergraduates preparing for an honors thesis, to graduate students designing a dissertation, through to seasoned scholars considering a new approach for their next set of studies. It offers a hands-on, practical guide to combining research across various methodological traditions: qualitative, machine learning, and quantitative approaches to concepts and measurement, adding quantitative and data-science components to process-tracing designs and to qualitative case studies in general, how qualitative research can strengthen regression-type designs, and how to mix qualitative elements with experiments. . Read more