A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research

doi:10.1093/pan/mpj017

Political Analysis Advance Access published online on June 7, 2006
Political Analysis, doi:10.1093/pan/mpj017

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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Political Methodology. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Article

A Tale of Two Cultures: Contrasting Quantitative and Qualitative Research

James Mahoney ¹ ^* and Gary Goertz ²

¹ Departments of Political Science and Sociology, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60208-1006
² Department of Political Science, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721

^* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
James Mahoney, E-mail: james-mahoney{at}northwestern.edu

Abstract

The quantitative and qualitative research traditions can bethought of as distinct cultures marked by different values,beliefs, and norms. In this essay, we adopt this metaphor towardthe end of contrasting these research traditions across 10 areas:(1) approaches to explanation, (2) conceptions of causation,(3) multivariate explanations, (4) equifinality, (5) scope andcausal generalization, (6) case selection, (7) weighting observations,(8) substantively important cases, (9) lack of fit, and (10)concepts and measurement. We suggest that an appreciation ofthe alternative assumptions and goals of the traditions canhelp scholars avoid misunderstandings and contribute to moreproductive "cross-cultural" communication in political science.

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