Let me start with what I have often observed to be a rather curious paradox in
the way policy analysts and development managers are trained. On the one
hand, considerable (and often increasing) attention is being paid to equip students
with quantitative skills, in particular (but not exclusively) in statistics and
data analysis. Typically, an undergraduate student will have done a course in
basic statistics and possibly also a course in techniques in multivariate analysis,
along with courses on planning techniques such as, for example, methods of
project appraisal. At MA level, more advanced training is added to this repertoire
of skills in quantitative methods. Yet, on the other hand, when students
subsequently embark on applied work (a research paper, a dissertation, or a
piece of policy research), many often fail to show much creativity in thinking with
data. Or, as Mary Morgan (1990: 263) put it, there is often little evidence of ``the
creative juggling in which theory and data come together to find out about the
real world'' (my emphasis).