ABSTRACT
This chapter challenges the widely held idea that there are two methodological paradigms in social research: the quantitative and the qualitative. It argues that the distinction between qualitative and quantitative is of limited use and, indeed, carries some danger. The chapter also argues that what is involved is not a simple contrast between two opposed standpoints, but a range of positions sometimes located on more than one dimension. It emphasizes that selection among the positions ought often to depend on the purposes and circumstances of the research, rather than being derived from methodological or philosophical commitments. This component of the qualitative-quantitative distinction emphasises the interpretative or hermeneutic character of qualitative research. The chapter discusses the issue that links most obviously back to nineteenth-century debates about the difference between natural science and history, as well as to twentieth-century disputes such as that surrounding behaviourism.
