# <u>Introduction</u>

There are artificial distinctions of method that limit us as social scientists. We economists think of ourselves as quantitative social scientists. Cultural anthropologists and some sociologists see themselves as ethnographers who rely on participant observation and qualitative methods. The reasons for this divide are a vestige of disciplinary history, how scholars are trained and assessed for tenure. By limiting ourselves to one set of methods, we limit the questions we can ask and constrain ourselves in the data available to answer them. The methods lead the questions, rather than the other way around.

It did not begin this way. Charles Booth, whose magnificent multi-volume _Life and Labour of the People in London_ (1892-97) helped set the stage for all social science research, triangulated between data from household surveys, participant observation and open-ended interviews to create detailed “poverty maps” of London. These maps drew on data, both quantitative and qualitative, that Booth and his team collected from every one of London’s four million residents to visualize where the poor and the rich lived. The maps drew a finely detailed picture of households and their living standards, the nature of their work, and many other characteristics that Booth grouped into three categories: Employment, “Circumstances” (illness, infirmity, family size, etc.) and “Questions of Habit” (what he called problems of “drunkenness and thriftlessness”). The task took seventeen years to complete (1886-1903), filled seventeen volumes and had a tremendous influence on economic and social policy, and on social science. (For more on Charles Booth’s work, see Mary Morgan’s (2019) excellent book.<sup>2</sup> ) Over the course of the 20<sup>th</sup> century, most social scientists moved away from this grounded, multi-method process of enquiry. Economics, in its quest toward greater scientific precision, became almost entirely focused on the analysis of quantitative data. Other less homogenous disciplines like sociology had subdisciplines that focused on either qualitative or quantitative methods, while anthropology split into (at least) two fields – cultural anthropology emphasizing participant observation and ethnography, and physical anthropology emphasizing the analysis of various types of quantitative data from archeological digs, genetic analysis, and experiments. Psychology moved from observational studies into an entirely experimental direction. These differences in method were a primary characteristic of how the social sciences distinguished themselves from one another.

However, even a cursory look at recent social science journals shows that things are changing. Disciplinary differences are increasingly getting bridged. Economics has taken a behavioral turn (Thaler, 2016), sociology and political science are getting increasingly interested in mixing qualitative and quantitative methods (Small 2011, Humphreys and Jacobs 2015), psychology is moving towards a mix of experimental, qualitative and survey methods (Paluck, 2010), and mixed methods are being actively used by development researchers and practitioners (e.g. Kanbur and Shaffer, 2007). We social scientists have expanded the questions we ask and seem to be moving towards a world where methods are subservient to questions. Consequently, we are increasingly mixing methods.

This paper provides a selective overview of mixing quantitative and qualitative methods – which is still a rarity in economics. I argue that qualitative methods offer a powerful set of tools that are of central concern to economists, and particularly for economists interested in questions of discrimination and development. They help reduce the distance between researchers and the subjects of their research and can help introduce an element of _reflexivity_ into economics. The paper does not attempt a full-fledged review of mixed methods, whether in economics or in other disciplines, but rather tries to illustrate various ways in which a judicious combination of qualitative and quantitative methods and tools can result in a more empathetic and richer understanding of human behavior. The examples which I will employ are also impressionistic rather than comprehensive. I will hew closely to topics that are of interest

> 2 The full set of maps and some of Booth’s “notebooks” can be explored here: https://booth.lse.ac.uk/map.

2