Fuzzy-Set Social Science. By Charles C. Ragin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000. 352p. $48.00 cloth, $20.00 paper
The department where I did my graduate training in the early 1970s was bitterly split between advocates of case-study and statistical approaches. At the time, both sides thought the other would fade away—statistical analysis was a fad; case studies, a relic from a prescientific past. But 30 years la...
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Published in | American Political Science Review Vol. 96; no. 2; pp. 452 - 453 |
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Main Author | |
Format | Journal Article Book Review |
Language | English |
Published |
New York, USA
Cambridge University Press
01.06.2002
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Subjects | |
Online Access | Get full text |
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Summary: | The department where I did my graduate training in the early 1970s was bitterly split between advocates of case-study and statistical approaches. At the time, both sides thought the other would fade away—statistical analysis was a fad; case studies, a relic from a prescientific past. But 30 years later, both methods persist, and the debate has recently intensified in response to King, Keohane, and Verba's (1994) assertion in Designing Social Inquiry that the methodology of case studies could be subsumed under that used in statistical research. The polite names for the two positions have changed—“case study” versus “large N” is more common now than the “traditional” versus “scientific” monikers of the 1960s and 1970s; the epithets—“slow journalism” versus “mindless number crunching”—remain much the same. |
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Bibliography: | PII:S0003055402800247 ark:/67375/6GQ-DC9WQHFC-B istex:8F403E3499D7C9B67F6A07463735A75FEEF8F2CF |
ISSN: | 0003-0554 1537-5943 |
DOI: | 10.1017/S0003055402800247 |