While heated arguments between practitioners of qualitative and quantitative research have begun to test the very integrity of the social sciences, Gary King, Robert Keohane, and Sidney Verba have produced a farsighted and timely book that promises to sharpen and strengthen a wide range of research performed in this field. These leading scholars, each representing diverse academic traditions, have developed a unified approach to valid descriptive and causal inference in qualitative research, where numerical measurement is either impossible or undesirable. Their book demonstrates that the same logic of inference underlies both good quantitative and good qualitative research designs, and their approach applies equally to each. Providing precepts intended to stimulate and discipline thought, the authors explore issues related to framing research questions, measuring the accuracy of data and uncertainty of empirical inferences, discovering causal effects, and generally improving qualitative research. Among the specific topics they address are interpretation and inference, comparative case studies, constructing causal theories, dependent and explanatory variables, the limits of random selection, selection bias, and errors in measurement. Mathematical notation is occasionally used to clarify concepts, but no prior knowledge of mathematics or statistics is assumed. The unified logic of inference that this book explicates will be enormously useful to qualitative researchers of all traditions and substantive fields.

加裏·金，美國哈佛大學阿爾伯特·魏斯赫德三世(Albert J.Weatherhead III)學院教授，曾是美國國傢科學院、美國統計學學會、美國科學促進會、美國藝術及科學學院、政治學方法論學會及美國政治及社會科學學院的院士或成員。其研究主要集中在社會科學方法論領域。

羅伯特·基歐漢，普林斯頓大學伍德羅·威爾遜學院教授，曾齣任美國國際關係學會及美國政治科學學會的會長。其研究集中在國際關係領域。

悉尼·維巴，哈佛大學政府學院榮休教授，在哈佛執教35年並曾齣任政府係係主任、政府學院副院長等行政職位，也曾擔任為哈佛大學齣版社董事會主席及美國政治科學學會會長。其研究集中在美國及比較政府研究領域。