Research Methods
This chapter reviews research methods in the study of welfare states and social policy, focusing on causal research. It addresses both comparative studies, which address the experiences of two or more country or subnational cases and historical studies, which address over-time variation, often with deep knowledge of cases, based on primary research. It also addresses combined comparative and historical studies. The chapter highlights the variety of methodological work in the welfare state area and delineates the advantages and disadvantages of the different approaches employed. These methods range from in-depth historical analyses of a single-country case, historical analyses of a few countries, and Boolean Qualitative Comparative Analyses (QCA) across medium-N samples of countries to cross-sectional, event history, and pooled cross-sectional and time-series analyses of large numbers of countries. The chapter concludes with suggestions for synthesizing, triangulating, and combining methods in order to minimize the disadvantages and maximize the advantages of different approaches.