ABSTRACT
Given the variety of research approaches and the wide range of research methodologies, still the best way to define and draw out the characteristics of social research is to fall back on the traditional division between quantitative and qualitative research traditions and to include the process of combining the two as an emerging ‘tradition’ in its own right. However, we should be aware that, in this book, this approach is a framework that is used principally to aid understanding. We make this point because the division has been represented as being unbridgeable. Exponents of each approach argued that theirs was the only true way to undertake research in education and the social sciences; the debates between them became so argumentative that the phrase ‘paradigm wars’ was used to describe them. Here the use of the terms ‘quantitative’, ‘qualitative’ and ‘mixed methods’ is nothing more than description and does not imply any superiority of one over the others.
