Challenging the Qualitative-Quantitative Divide

A team of social scientists identify problems with quantitative and qualitative research as strict categories, and explore case-focused approaches to causal analysis. They cover what is wrong with quantitative research, the problem of inference from outcomes to opportunities, grounded theorizing and the qualitative survey, ethnic inequalities in educational achievement as an example of qualitative causal analysis and the fallacies of composition and division, analytic induction versus qualitative comparative analysis, set theory versus correlation methods as exemplified by ability and educational achievement, and comparing fuzzy qualitative comparative analysis with fuzzy cluster analysis. Annotation c2012 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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, UKRoger 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.