Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• reza hemmati

Abstract

Struggle between Qualitative and Quantitative researchers has had a long history, even before applying (these methods) into the social science, each one trying to prove their legitimacy. Dominance of quantitative researches that played an influential role for many decades, decreased with emerging feminist movement and other social and political processes. Along with the decline of quantitative methods, we have witnessed primitive concerns in integrating and combining qualitative and quantitative methods, to romedy the weaknesses of both methods. In the present article qualitative and quantitative approaches are briefly shortly introduced, and their weaknesses and strengthens are examined. Then The differences among these approaches and the possibility of combining the two methods are discussed. Introducing an integrated approach, its presumptions, methods of integrating, and the challenges ahead of this relatively new approach, constitute final part of the article.

Keywords

• Quantitative method
• Qualitative Method
• Integrated method
• Positivistic approach
• Interpretive approach
• Pragmatism