The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretivist Approaches In the Analysis of Contested Events Wendy D. Roth and Jal D. Mehta Department of Sociology and Social Policy Harvard University This is the Accepted Version of an article published in Sociological Methods and Research. The citation is: Roth, Wendy D. and Jal D. Mehta. 2002. “The Rashomon Effect: Combining Positivist and Interpretive Approaches in the Analysis of Contested Events.” Sociological Methods and Research, 31(2):131-173. The published article is available online: http://smr.sagepub.com/content/31/2/131.abstract Abstract: Positivist and interpretivist analytical approaches are frequently believed to be incompatible as research strategies and ways of understanding the world. This paper argues that not only may versions of positivism and interpretivism be combined in the analysis of contested events, but this combination can further the goals of both approaches by contributing information which may have been missed by adopting only one perspective. We illustrate each of these approaches and how they may be combined using two case studies of lethal school shootings near Paducah, Kentucky and Jonesboro, Arkansas. Conflicting accounts of events are problematic for the positivist researcher; we therefore introduce new methodological strategies to manage potential biases that may lead to contradictory testimony. However, these same contradictions act as distinct data points from the interpretivist perspective, offering insight into the cultural understandings of a community. We develop new forms of triangulation that are tailored to these research goals, and illustrate how, just as positivist analysis may be used to aid interpretivism, an interpretive understanding of a community may be necessary to develop causal theories of contested events such as school shootings. The authors can be contacted at Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 33 Kirkland St, Cambridge, MA 02138 or via email (wroth@wjh.harvard.edu, jmehta@fas.harvard.edu). We thank Katherine Newman, David Harding, and Cybelle Fox and two anonymous reviewers for helpful discussions and comments. This research was funded by grants from the National Academy of Sciences and the William T. Grant Foundation (Katherine Newman, Principal Investigator), by a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, and by a National Science Foundation Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship Grant (#98070661).