Thinking Pragmatically about Research Design in Quantitative and Qualitative Research

Quantitative and qualitative approaches to social science are often framed as incompatible and incommensurable. I argue that once the research goal of a project is made clear, the distinction between qualitative and quantitative research fades away. Explaining individual cases and identifying general causal effects require different procedures of scientific inference. But these methodological differences need not entail fundamental epistemological disagreements. In this talk, I review some recent work on individual causation and within-case analysis, and I illustrate how cross-case (comparative) and within-case (case study) work can be fruitfully combined with examples from political science and public policy.

Dimiter Toshkov is Associate Professor at the Institute of Public Administration, Leiden University. His research interests are in European integration, comparative public policy, and research methodology. He is the author of the popular textbook Research Design in Political Science (2016).

Please join the lecture via Webex here (Meeting 1212586738, Password DAqKsm8VP47).