Quantitative Methods

The divide between quantitative and qualitative methods remains as wide as ever. Many researchers still tend to use one approach, but not the other. Not only is the divide personal, it often sorts out researchers into topics of study. As a result many academics assume that quantitative investigation only concerns elections, voting systems, party manifestos and political attitudes rather than having a more general application. The division becomes manifest in the descriptors researchers apply to themselves and to others: quantitative researchers are known as political scientists; the rest often have the labels of students of politics, area specialists and public policy scholars. Not only do different topics, skills and networks help create the divide, it is sustained by apparently clashing conceptions of the purpose and practice of social science. Some critics believe that quantitative work is underpinned by a crude version of positivism while qualitative work describes complex realities, acknowledges that researchers cannot separate their values from the political world, engages with and seeks to understand the beliefs and aspirations of those who are being researched and rejects the idea that there are universal laws of human behaviour.