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The usual juxtaposition of qualitative research against quantitative research makes it easy to miss the fact that qualitative research itself encompasses at least two traditions: positivist and interpretivist. Positivist work-seeks to identify qualitative data with propositions that can then be tested or identified in other cases, while interpretive work seeks to combine those data into systems of belief whose manifestations are specifc to a case. In this paper, I argue that discovering causal relationships is the province of positivist research, while discovering causal mechanisms is the province of interpretivists. I explain why absolutist claims for one or the other approach are mistaken, and argue that the combination of both makes more sense. Finally, I offer suggestions for combinations of positivist and interpretive work, both at the level of thought experiment and in actual data collection and analysis. Throughout, I draw my examples from recent studies of poverty, a field in which a small but distinguished tradition of qualitative studies of the poor has been joined by a growing body of both positivist and interpretive work.
From case studies to econometric analysis, policy research has a long tradition of employing both qualitative and quantitative methods, but the usual juxtaposition of qualitative research against quantitative research makes it easy to miss the fact that qualitative research itself encompasses a multitude of different approaches. Qualitative work can be positivist: It can attempt to document practices that lead consistently to one set of outcomes rather than another, to identify characteristics that commonly are related to some policy problem, or to find strategic patterns that hold across different venues and with different actors. Qualitative work also can be interpretivist: It can seek to understand what general concepts like "poverty" or "race" mean in their specific operation, to uncover the conscious and unconscious explanations people have for what they do or believe, or to capture and reproduce a particular time, culture, or place so that actions people take become intelligible.l
The differences between interpretive and positivist work easily can be seen by way of a comparison. Kathryn Edin (1991) and Carol Stack (1974) both have done extensive research on the coping strategies of welfare recipients. Based on extended, repeated interviews with welfare recipients, both studies describe the difficulty mothers have...