ABSTRACT
If you have just finished reading Chapter 5, do not worry – this one will be shorter. Had qualitative methods been discussed first, then this would have become the larger chapter, as there is a need in any book like this to distinguish between the two basic approaches of doing research for a dissertation that addresses both theoretical and empirical issues. Consequently, this chapter can begin with most of the task of drawing distinctions between the quantitative and qualitative traditions already completed through Chapters 2 and 5. By default then, this is a shorter chapter, but that is not to intimate that there is less to be said about the qualitative tradition. As noted in Chapter 2, the qualitative
tradition has an especially important role to play in political research and it is fully the author’s intention to do it justice here.
