Combining the Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches to Poverty Measurement and Analysis: The Practice and the Potential, Vol. 366 Book

This paper highlights the key characteristics of the quantitative and qualitative approaches to poverty measurement and analysis, examines the strengths and weaknesses of each approach, and analyzes the potential for combining the two approaches in analytical work on poverty. The paper ' s main conclusion is that sole reliance on either only the quantitative approach or only the qualitative approach in measuring and analyzing poverty is often likely to be less desirable than combining the two approaches. this is because there are limits to a purely quantitative approach as well as a purely qualitative approach to poverty measurement and analysis. Each approach has an appropriate time and place, but in most cases both approaches are required to address a problem ' s different aspects and to answer questions which the other approach cannot answer as well or not at all. Three key ways to combine the quantitative and qualitative approaches are: (1) integrating methodologies; (2) confirming, refuting, enriching, and explaining the findings of one approach with those of the other; and (3) merging the findings of the two approaches into one set of policy recommendations.