Mixed methods in criminological research: Challenges and models

In the last 20 – 30 years, in social sciences new models of planning the research activity and of treating the data, characterized by the use of so – called “mixed methods”, have allowed to go beyond the debate between the supporters of qualitative and of quantitative methods.This theoretical – methodological paper reviews the literature and outlines some interesting challenges, which criminology could take into account: starting from the consideration of the multimethodological approach as a mental model, the paper examines the prevailing opinion, that views the qual-quant integration simply as a methodological issue, and tries to go further, describing a particular approach (QCA) in which qual-and quant-are irremediably mixed, that could be considered fruitful for criminological research, in which the mixed methods approach has been scarcely considered.