Od kwestionariuszowego badania próby losowej do pogłębionej analizy życiowych przypadków – i z powrotem. Dwa wywiady biograficzne i kilka refleksji teoretycznych
From Quantitative Research Based on a Random Sample to In-depth Analysis of Life Experiences – and Back: Two Biographical Interviews and a Few Theoretical Reflections

Summary/Abstract: In many variants of the so-called biographical method in sociology it is recommended that the interviewee’s story about his or her life (life story) should be supplemented with contextual knowledge concerning the history of this person’s life (life history). In practice, this recommendation is rarely implemented, mainly because of the lack of access to parallel sources of information. In this article we present two biographical narrative interviews which have been conducted with respondents of the Polish Panel Survey POLPAN and for which it was possible to enrich the analysis by knowledge derived from questionnaire interviews (quantitative data) gathered between 1987 and 2013. We describe the way in which the interviews have been juxtaposed with the information recorded in the questionnaires and – based on this comparison – present suggestions for the interpretation of data from such different sources. The article is mainly empirical but also contains some reflections on (1) intradisciplinary divisions and tensions in sociology, (2) difficulties in combining different research methods on the data level rather than the level of conclusions.

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