The Role of Local Food in Maldives Tourism - Scholarly Commons ...

impact on tourism promotion by the sale of shrimp at dockside retail establishments or
by shrimp fishermen in South Carolina was investigated by Deale (2008).
It is argued that case studies are often the most appropriate method to adopt when
analysing the background, processes and practices that are related to a research topic
(Yin, 2003; Gillham, 2000; Finn et al., 2000). A case-study method was used in this
research because it allowed the context of tourism to be better understood in relation to
the research question. Gillham (2000, p. 3) identified two fundamental characteristics of
case studies: they rely on multiple sources of data and the research does not start with
an ‘a priori’ theory: “The case study researcher, working inductively from what’s there
in the research setting develops grounded theory” (Gillham, 2000, p. 12). Hence, as a
case study, this research necessitates the use of multiple methods and an inductive
research process where theories will be formulated from the research findings.
3.4 Multiple methods and triangulation
Due to the richness of the context that case studies provide, a single method for data
collection is often not appropriate. Instead, multiple sources of evidence gathered by
different methods are required. Such an approach is known as “multi-method” (Gillham,
2000, p. 13).
Restricting research to purely quantitative methods runs the risk of neglecting the social
and cultural composition of the research object (Denzin & Lincoln, 1998). On the
contrary, since qualitative research utilizes a wide range of interrelated methods and
belongs to multiple paradigms, qualitative methodologies are able to secure a thorough
comprehension and better insight into the research question than quantitative
approaches that rely on just empirical evidence (Patton, 2002).
However, combining qualitative and quantitative methods can be challenging because
of the technical difficulties of effectively combining the two approaches, and because of
the conflicting paradigms of these methodologies (Morgan, 2006).
The approach of focusing on the same study from different methodological perspectives
is known as triangulation (Gillham, 2000). Triangulation “involves the use of multiple
methods – each representing a different perspective or lens – to assess a given
phenomenon in order to enhance confidence in the validity of findings’ (Greene,
Kreider & Mayer, 2005, p. 274). Denzin (1978, in Janesick, 2000) identified four types
of triangulation:
48