Training in Research Methods in Graduate Education: Multi-Methods Approaches for Today´s Research Needs

ABSTRACT The article discusses the importance of teaching qualitative and quantitative research methods as complementary approaches depending on the objectives of the researcher. We argue that today scientific knowledge is not just a object of universities and the academic world but rather scientific knowledge since the 19th Century is part of a process of formulating public policies and in the 20th Century scientific knowledge becomes a key element in the delimitation of policies and for this reason there is an important development in the quantitative approaches precisely in order to be able to generalize findings to a population or population segment, the objective of policy, since the intent of public policy is to reach collectivities and thus the need for scientific data on those collectivities. This article shows the double tendency in the history of social research methods: on the one hand, the mere interest in academics and on the other hand, the needs of governments to have empirical data about their peoples. This double trajectory of social research methods will become integrated in the 20th Century between the First and Second World Wars when governments look to universities to train applied researchers in research methodologies more appropriate for studies that provide inputs to the formulation and evaluation of public policy.