The multimethod as a successful strategy for addressing social phenomena: experiencies in the investigation of poverty

Abstract

In this work we pretend to valorize the potentiality of the multimethod strategy for the study of social phenomena by means of the sistematization of experiencies acquired during the investigation of urban poverty. We argue that the story of epistemological and methodological decisions taken by our research group in order to address the complexity of the poverty phenomenon will be fruitful to other researchers.
In this way, the items that assume an equitative importance in this article are: exposition of the criteria used to select suitable information sources in order to address each edge of the poverty phenomenon, the story of the encounter with obstacles to access each of these sources, the account of how it was possible to get around those obstacles, and the sistematization of some of the contributions that we have elaborated in the field of conceptualization and understanding of the phenomenon by means of data correlation and complementation of approaches.
The application of the multimethod strategy for the study of poverty was highly positive and we sustain that it would also be for other social phenomena sharing with our object the same characteristics of complexity, multidimensionality, polysemy and historical-geographical dynamism.