An Approach to the Integration of Qualitative and Quantitative Research Methods in Software Engineering Research

Two distinct research methods coexist in SE: quantitative methods, which seek to measure and analyze causal relationships between variables in a framework with free values, and qualitative methods, which examine the process of creating meanings from which new or improved theorems are generated. Applying these two methods separately to SE research, it becomes clear that the results obtained are incomplete and thus it is difficult to definitively choose between quantitative and qualitative methods when embarking on a specific research. To address this problem, a new research method based on integrating quantitative and qualitative methods is proposed.