An Ontology-based Mixed Method. Evidences from Cultural Tourism in Anacapri

One of the current debates in social science methodology is the idea that the two main epistemological paradigms - the Qualitative and the Quantitative one - are compatible, so they can both be used in a single research study. The answer to this request of compatibility is in the Mixed Methods Research (MMR). The underlying goal of thesemethods is to provide a link between the qualitative and quantitative approach in order to get an additional value to the phenomenon under investigation. The final aim is not to replace each of the two approaches but rather to draw from the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of both in single research studies and across studies. In this paper we consider the theoretical framework of MMR while putting emphasis on a joint reading of qualitative and quantitative methods in orderto create relations between the databases underlying the two approaches which usually do not communicate because oftheir different goals. We propose an exploratory data analysismethod to combine data coming from typical qualitative research together with survey data through a common coding of their ontological reading. A case study will be presented in order to show the meaningful of the proposed method.