Q-squared : combining qualitative and quantitative approaches in poverty analysis / Paul Shaffer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Shaffer, Paul.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Poverty--Statistical methods.

Poverty.

Poverty--Mathematical models.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 pages ) illustrations (black and white)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2013.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

This work is about poverty in the Global South. It presents results from a wide range of mixed method, or Q-Squared (Q ) - combined qualitative and quantitative approaches - studies conducted in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America about who are poor and why. This book examines the underlying assumptions and implications of how we conceptualise and investigate poverty. The empirical entry point for such inquiry is a series of research initiatives that have used mixed method, combined qualitative and quantitative, or Q-Squared ( Q ) approaches, to poverty analysis. The Q literature highlights the vast range of analytical tools within the social sciences that may be used to understand and explain social phenomena, along withinteresting research results. This literature serves as a lens to probe issues about knowledge claims made in poverty debates concerning who are the poor (identification analysis) and why they are poor (causal analysis). Implicitly or explicitly, questions are raised about the reasons for emphasising differentdimensions of poverty and favouring different units of knowledge, the basis for distinguishing valid and invalid claims, the meaning of causation, and the nature of causal inference, and so forth. Q provides an entry point to address foundational issues about assumptions underlying approaches to poverty, and applied issues about the strengths and limitations of different research methods and the ways they may be fruitfully combined. Together, the strands of this inquiry make a case formethodological pluralism on the grounds that knowledge is partial, empirical adjudication imperfect, social phenomena complex, and mixed methods add value for understanding and explanation. Ultimately, the goals of understanding and explanation are best served if research questions dictate the choice ofmethodological approach rather than the other way around.

Contents:

pt. I. Introduction

pt. II. Identification : who are the poor and what are their characteristics?

pt. III. Causal analysis : why are people poor?

pt. IV. Conclusion.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0-19-166459-6