Understanding Research: Coping with the Quantitative - Qualitative Divide

Successfully completing a research project is a major milestone in a postgraduate, and many an undergraduate university degree. It is also the cornerstone of an academic career. This book treats the often conflicting demands of academic research projects in four respects; (1) those decisions we all need to make along a certain path that has a point of destination in mind and the implications of these decisions in the longer term: (2) practical and philosophical conundrums, as they emerge along the way, around specific techniques for gathering and then analysing ‘data': (3) moments of disconnect, overlap, and potentially mutual benefit for researchers working at different points along the quantitative-qualitative divide that underscores popular and scholarly debates about the relevance of academic research: (4) ways of coping with a divide that is both real and imagined; in all its experiential, institutional, and conceptual variations. With coping the key word, this book is a real-time ‘rough guide’ to conducting academic research. Both theoretically informed and consciously pragmatic it provides research students, and their supervisors, practical and theoretical guidance on how to begin, execute, and communicate the outcome of research projects undertaken at the intersection of the arts, humanities, and social sciences in international and cross-cultural settings. The goal is to provide ways of working through, rather than be stumped by entrenched positions on divisions that can and do matter to the successful completion of an original piece of research.