Longitudinal research and the analysis of social change - Coordinating editor's introduction

The aim of this special issue of Quality and Quantity is to collect the contributions to the International Workshop "Longitudinal Analysis: A Bridge between Quantitative and Qualitative Social Research", held at the University of Padova between 14-16 May 1998. All chapters were originally presented as papers at the above mentioned Workshop. The Workshop had four main purposes. (1) To explain what longitudinal data analysis is and to discuss why introducing a temporal element can increase the explanatory power of empirical analysis; (2) To offer an overview of some of the methods which can be used to analyse longitudinal data; (3) To provide information about some of the existing longitudinal data sets; (4) To discuss and compare some of the empirical evidences which has emerged from ‘qualitative’ and ‘quantitative’ longitudinal research