Multimethod Research : A Synthesis of Styles

"Multimethod Research introduces both the student and professional to a more effective approach to social science research--an approach which opens up new avenues for future research. "[Multimethod Research] is valuable for two reasons. The first is perhaps unintentional. In developing their thesis, Brewer and Hunter compare and contrast the major primary research methods. In doing so, they provide an integrated perspective of research planning. . . . The second value of Brewer and Hunter′s book is the power of their thesis: that researchers should not limit themselves to one preferred research methodology." --Journal of Business Communication "It is in the description of the approach to this planning and synthesis that this book has so much to offer." --Journal of the Institute of Health Education Fieldwork, surveys, experiments, and nonreactive studies--while each method can provide valid information about social science phenomena, they unfortunately have inherent limitations. Each method differs in terms of the data generated, and in its vulnerability to error. Multimethod Research offers an explanation of how a planned synthesis of these various research techniques can be purposely used to improve social science knowledge. Timely and eloquently written, the authors discuss the many aspects of the multimethod research approach including the formulation of research problems, data collection, sampling and generalization, measurement, reliability and validity, hypothesis testing and causal analysis, and writing and publicizing results. The authors conclude with a discussion of the place multimethod research has within the social sciences and its future direction.

John D. Brewer is President of the British Sociological Association and Sixth-Century Professor of Sociology and former Head of Department (2004-2007) at Aberdeen University, moving from Queen’s University Belfast in July 2004. He was Head of the School of Sociology and Social Policy at Queen’s between 1993-2002. He has held visiting appointments at Yale University (1989), St John’s College Oxford (1992), Corpus Christi College Cambridge (2002) and the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (2003).  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts (elected 1998), an Academician in the Academy of Social Sciences (elected 2003), a Member of the Royal Irish Academy (elected 2004), then only the third sociologist to be elected in the Academy’s 217-year history, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (elected 2008).  He was a member of the Training and Development Board of the ESRC (2005-2007) and has been Chair of the British Sociological Association (2004-2006), a member of the National Committee for Economics and Social Science of the Royal Irish Academy (1997-1999) and a member of the International Assessment Panel of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (2002-07). He currently sits on the Council of the Irish Research Council for Humanities and Social Sciences and is a member of the ESRC′s Research College. In 2001 he became a member of the Institute of Learning and Teaching in Higher Education. In 2010 he became a member of the United Nations Roster of Global Experts.


Albert Hunter is professor of sociology at Northwestern University, and is affiliated with Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research and the Transportation Center. He has previously taught at the University of Chicago, Wesleyan University, and the University of Rochester. He has held visiting appointments at Yale, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Paris, and the University of Edinburgh. His teaching and research interests include urban sociology, community, ethnicity, culture and literature, urban politics and civil society, and research methods. Hunter has published numerous books and articles, including Symbolic Communities, The Rhetoric of Social Research: Understood and Believed, Foundations of Multimethod Research, and most recently Pragmatic Liberalism: Constructing a Civil Society. His undergraduate degree is from Cornell and his PhD is from the University of Chicago.