RETHINKING SOCIAL INQUIRY - DIVERSE TOOLS, SHARED STANDARDS

Editors Brady (political science and public policy, U. of California at Berkeley) and Collier (political science, U. of California at Berkeley) combine their experiences in working with, respectively, quantitative and qualitative methods of social research in presenting a work promoting shared standards of methodology that take into account the relationship between the two different types of research methods. Their quest takes the form of 13 papers that, together, comprise an extended discussion of the issues raised by a book that "exemplifies the approach of mainstream quantitative methods: Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative Research" by King, Keohane, and Verba. In addition to critiquing Designing Social Inquiry, the contributing authors also present a defense of quantitative tools and explore ways to link the qualitative and quantitative traditions.