1 Exploring causation in poor people’s lives: towards a pragmatic approach

In this think-piece I draw on a mixed-methods study into poverty dynamics in Bangladesh that I have been involved in since 2006 with colleagues from the Chronic Poverty Research Centre and the International Food Policy Research Institute. Mixed-methods research in the social sciences is currently undergoing a revival as researchers recognise how different research approaches can complement each other in helping us understand the social world.1 In poverty studies in developing countries, which tend to use either a quantitative or a qualitative approach, rather than mixed methods, the potential for integrating both quantitative and qualitative methods is also now much better recognised.2 However in practice integrated qualitative and quantitative methods are still not particularly well developed. In research methodology we are accustomed to thinking about ontological ideas, about what is in the social world, preceding epistemological ideas, about how we investigate the social world. Qualitative and quantitative researchers often hold similar views on the nature of poverty, but the types of indicators they use affects the way we think about poverty. So the influence goes both ways. In research practice sometimes our epistemological approach affects the ontological idea of what we are trying to understand. Quantitative researchers tend to think about poverty in relatio