Professor Weller and Professor Barnes will present a talk and two applied workshops on their recent book Finding Pathways: Mixed-Method Research for Studying Causal Mechanisms.

The talk will begin at 12:30 pm and the applied workshops will take place from 1:30-3:30 pm on Tuesday, May 5.

Combining quantitative and qualitative research methods has become a common practice in the social sciences.  The instinct is that these different approaches have complementary strengths and that leveraging these strengths will improve our confidence in the finding of a causal relationship. The question then is how to implement cross-methods research strategies.  Weller and Barnes argue that there are two distinct approaches to combining quantitative and qualitative work: "multi-method" and "mixed-method" research.  Multi-method research rests on the logic of triangulation, seeking the convergence of results under different methods .  Mixed-method research rests on the potential outcomes approach to causal inference.  It is skeptical that case studies can achieve causal inference; instead, it seeks to create a division of labor among methods where large-N (experimental and/or observational) work provides evidence of the underlying causal relationship while case studies provide critical insights into the validity of the assumptions of the causal studies, their scope conditions, and hypotheses about mechanisms.  Weller and Barnes show how mixed-method research would lead to the selection of different cases and the analysis of different types of questions than would usually be undertaken in multi-method research.

The applied sessions will be based on Professor Weller and Professor Barnes’ recent book Finding Pathways: Mixed-Method Research for Studying Causal Mechanisms.

Lunch will be provided.

PS 595 Credit.