How qualitative research really counts

• Main Author: BENOIT, Kenneth
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2005
• Subjects: Political Science; Quantitative, Qualitative, Comparative, and Historical Methodologies
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/4053; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/5311/viewcontent/QualReallyCounts_2005_pv.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

The main point of this essay is straightforward: The distinction between quantitative and qualitative research, when applied to empirical political analysis, is exaggerated and largely artificial. In fact, most political scientists can happily perform valid and useful research without being concerned about where they stand on the quantitative-qualitative divide. Furthermore, qualitative characterizations are often easily converted into quantitative characterizations, and many qualitative characterizations are implicitly quantitative to begin with. Finally, qualitative characterizations of the empirical world are almost always more useful when converted into quantitative ones.