This article investigates the relationship between research methods and conceptions of causation in mixed-methods research. It begins by distinguishing the natural conception of causation from the intentional conception. Natural causation construes causal explanation as establishing and accounting for ordered patterns of human behavior on the model of the natural sciences and is associated with quantitative methods. Intentional causation construes causal explanation as establishing and accounting for ordered patterns of human behavior in terms of norm-governed institutions and practices and is associated with qualitative methods. The article then argues that both conceptions of causation have a role in social research but that the two conceptions do not map on to quantitative versus qualitative methods. Rather the relationship is crisscrossing—quantitative methods can be used to investigate intentional causation and qualitative methods can be used to investigate natural causation—within an overarching framework of mixed-methods interpretivism in which intentional causation is primary.
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