Episode 3 – Aruna Ranganathan: Full-Cycle Approach

Ethnography Atelier Podcast

In the third episode of the podcast, we talk with Professor Aruna Ranganathan (Stanford Graduate School of Business) about her experience using a full-cycle approach to mixed methods. This approach starts with the observation of naturally-occurring phenomena supported by inductive techniques and then moves to theory-testing with the use of quantitative datasets and experiments. Although mixing different methods is a promising strategy enabling the researcher to interrogate the phenomena of interest from multiple angles, it is also somewhat challenging and still relatively rare. In our conversation, Aruna reflected about her use of the full-cycle approach, its main strengths and weakness, and shared tips on how to cross the qualitative/quantitative divide in empirical research.