ABSTRACT
Can we genuinely combine the publications deriving from both quantitative and qualitative research, and so produce an overall view of a particular substantive area? This question is not confronted to the same degree as the issue of whether the two traditions can be combined in a single study, even though ostensibly it is just as important. Since the consumer of social research is very frequently confronted with substantive domains in which quantitative and qualitative research co-exist, the relationship between the output of the two approaches within a field is an important facet of the cumulative nature of knowledge within this field. The distinction between the epistemological and the technical versions of the debate about the two research traditions rears its head again in this context. It might be anticipated that the epistemological version would imply that the two sets of findings cannot be amalgamated since they are predicated on different views of the proper foundation of the social sciences. However, it is very unusual to see this point argued. For example, qualitative researchers are invariably quite prepared to show how pre-existing quantitative research influenced their research problem and how their own findings have implications for data emanating from the quantitative tradition.
