Читать книгу Understanding Case Study Research - Malcolm Tight - Страница 23

[D]ifferent conceptions of the term ‘case’ are central to the enduring gulf between quantitative and qualitative social science… The view that quantitative researchers look at many cases, while qualitative researchers look at only one or a small number of cases, can be maintained only by allowing considerable slippage in what is meant by ‘case’… the tendency to conflate qualitative research and case study should be resisted. (Ragin 1992a, pp. 3–4)

As has already been stressed, when considering definitions of case study, some authors view case study as wholly or primarily qualitative in nature (and the classifications by Punch, 2005, of ‘approaches to qualitative research design’, and Burns, 2000, of ‘qualitative methods’, summarised in Box 3.1, provide examples of this tendency). When looking at the origins and history of case study in Chapter 2, it also appeared that there had been much debate regarding the relationship between case study and statistical (i.e. quantitative) methods. It is important, therefore, to be clear about the position of case study with respect to the qualitative/quantitative debate.

As you are probably aware, much energy and paper has been expended on arguing the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative forms of research, and a great deal of this has not been particularly productive. Often, opponents in the debate have employed stereotypical or misleading representations of each other’s assumptions and practices so as to be better able to critique and knock them down. Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear or read the view expressed that qualitative and quantitative research are based on fundamentally different views of the world and how it can, or should, be studied. If so, it would be very difficult – and, some would argue, completely out of the question – to employ both qualitative and quantitative methods in the same research study.

Thus, quantitative researchers may align themselves with the scientific method, portraying themselves as searchers for the objective truth about the world (social or physical) and how it works, and dismiss qualitative research as subjective, small-scale and lacking in rigour. Qualitative researchers, for their part, may highlight the richness and depth of their data and analysis, while accusing quantitative research of superficiality, arguing that everything – and certainly not the social world – cannot be reduced to mere numbers.

Often, of course, these preferences are linked to the skill sets of the researchers concerned (e.g. some people feel at home with large data sets and multivariate analyses; others are much more comfortable talking to or observing other people in natural settings). They may also reflect their underlying world-views of knowledge and how it can be accessed or developed (i.e. their ontologies and epistemologies).

Nowadays, however, more pragmatically orientated researchers (of which, as you may have surmised, I am one) have distanced themselves from these debates, arguing that mixed methods research, making use of both qualitative and quantitative methods as appropriate, has much more to offer (e.g. Bryman 2004; Scott 2007; Tashakkori and Teddlie 1998). Indeed, I would go further in arguing that all researchers (or, at least, social researchers) should be able to use, and interpret, both qualitative and quantitative methods, at least to some level of understanding.

The same argument may be applied to case study research, which, though it is sometimes claimed by qualitative researchers (probably because of its typically small-scale, detailed focus), may make use of quantitative techniques as well as, or instead of, qualitative methods. It is both possible and acceptable, therefore, to pursue case study research using quantitative data and methods. Thus, for example, the Sage Handbook of Case-based Methods (Byrne and Ragin 2009) contains five chapters on quantitative approaches to case-based method and five on qualitative approaches.

Ragin (2000) himself has developed another way forward, through his application of fuzzy set methods to case study research. Fuzzy set methods are an approach which accepts that the researcher may not be able to categorise particular cases as belonging wholly to particular groups (e.g. if the case is a nation, and we are examining democracy, is the case wholly democratic?), but can give them an indicative percentage membership figure (e.g. 70% democratic). This then allows an approach to the cross-case analysis of multiple case studies which is both qualitative and quantitative.