Combining Quantitative and Creative Methods: Epistemological, Ethical and Practical Challenges

This methodological session explores the integration of quantitative approaches and creative methods in contemporary social research, addressing both their transformative potential and the epistemological, ethical and practical tensions they generate. While mixed-methods research often frames integration as a technical issue of sequencing, triangulation or complementarity, the encounter between surveys, administrative data, indicators statistical modelling, with visual methods, filmmaking, storytelling, arts-based practices, mapping, performance and narrative devices raises deeper questions. What counts as evidence when numbers, embodied experience, situated knowledge, imagination and aesthetic forms are brought into the same research design? How can different regimes of validity, reliability, interpretation and accountability enter into dialogue without one methodological logic being subordinated to another?

The session is particularly interested in contributions that examine different levels of integration, from research designs in which creative methods support data collection or dissemination, to studies in which they actively shape research questions, analytical categories, interpretation, impact evaluation and forms of public restitution. We especially welcome papers examining the role of creative techniques in producing, interpreting and legitimising knowledge across research designs that combine quantitative and creative approaches.

Contributions may address, among others:

• visual, sensory, arts-based and performative methods;
• filmmaking, photography, drawing, mapping and storytelling;
• co-design, participatory workshops and collaborative interpretation;
• citizen science, digital methods and creative data practices;
• mixed-methods designs integrating surveys, indicators, modelling or administrative data with creative outputs.

The session foregrounds challenges of integration itself: participation, power asymmetries, authorship, representation, accessibility, analytical comparability, feasibility, resources, evaluation criteria and the sustainability of interdisciplinary infrastructures.