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The development of a methodology for inquiry into human affairs requires consideration of four interlocking, but nonetheless conceptually distinct domains. Each domain contains a set of issues that are relevant and important to the practice of social inquiry. Collectively, the domains present a justificatory framework and a set of practical guidelines for a given approach to social inquiry. The burgeoning literature in mixed methods approaches to social inquiry engages all four domains, but somewhat unevenly. This is also so for the papers presented in this special issue of Research in the Schools. This concluding article first offers a brief portrait of the requisite domains for a social inquiry methodology, and then connects each of the papers in this special issue to these domains. Comments on priority future directions for the continued development of a methodology of mixed methods social inquiry conclude the discussion.
What Constitutes a Methodology for Social Inquiry?
A methodology for social inquiry engages four domains of issues and assumptions: philosophical assumptions and stances, inquiry logics, guidelines for practice, and sociopolitical commitments in science. Each domain is briefly described below.
Domain 1 - Philosophical Assumptions and Stances
A social science methodology is importantly rooted in issues that are the substance of the philosophy of science, in particular, assumptions about the nature of the social world (ontology) and about the nature of warranted social knowledge (epistemology). This domain also includes stances regarding related issues, such as objectivity and subjectivity, the role of context and contingency in social knowing, and the relationship between the knower and the known. In addition to these traditionally paradigmatic issues, this domain encompasses broader facets of an inquirer's own mental model (Phillips, 1996; Smith, 1997), such as value commitments and the perspectives and core constructs of particular disciplines, for example, "disequilibrium" as a catalyst for growth in human development and "maximization of satisfaction" as the fulcrum of consumer decision making in economics. Domain 1 thus guides the inquirer's gaze to look at particular things in particular ways and offers appropriate philosophical and theoretical justification for this way of seeing, observing, and interpreting.
Domain 2 - Inquiry Logics
Domain 2 constitutes what is commonly called "methodology" in social science. For a given approach to social inquiry, this domain identifies...