Two cultures and beyond: A plea for three approaches

Gary Goertz and James Mahoney are masters in presenting methodological messages in an accessible, lucid, and at the same time focused and precise style. Their Tale of Two Cultures: Qualitative and Quantitative Research in the Social Sciences is another impressive example of this quality. In this book they juxtapose the statistical and the set-theoretical ways of thinking as two distinct and internally “relatively coherent cultures of research” (footnote 2, p. 5). They feel obliged to label these two cultures “quantitative” and “qualitative” because “the qualitative-quantitative distinction is built into nearly everyone’s vocabulary in the social sciences, and it serves as a common point of reference for distinguishing different kinds of work” although they admit that those labels “are quite inadequate for capturing the most salient differences between the two traditions” (p. 5). For Goertz and Mahoney, the two cultures differ basically in two respects: (a) whereas quantitative research is focusing primarily on cross-case analysis, inferences in qualitative studies are drawn primarily on the basis of within-case analysis; (b) quantitative scholars use the sophisticated techniques of statistics; qualitative scholars, in contrast, use—albeit often implicitly—logic and set theory. We agree with Goertz and Mahoney when it comes to the two methodological cultures they describe but we are less convinced by their labeling, because a significant part of what makes research qualitative is not captured by their approach. We will come back to this point when we present our more critical remarks about the book.