The same is true for the agricultural economist who wants to know if producers and consumers are responding positively to a new agricultural program; it is for this agricultural economist to spend hours and hours living with the farmers by observing and noticing, discreetly on the spot or preferably at home, anything that can constitute reliable indicators todescribe the reality studied. The few examples that have just been given do not exhaust all the research possibilities offered by one or other of the methodological approaches analyzed; they merely highlight the particular characteristics of the two categories of research .Qualitative research is therefore fundamentally based on the assumption that an internal understanding can be accessed, and this makes possible an understanding of human behavior superior to that provided by a surface study that involves quantitative methods. In addition, the qualitative method allows the researcher to closely glue the data and thereby develop, from the data themselves,explanatory patterns that are more analytical and better articulated on the reality.In qualitative research, the theory often occurs after the observation, from anextrapolation resulting from the events themselves.

The researcher does not start with models, theories, hypotheses, but rather a certain understanding of the interactions and everyday facts that will be examined against more general models or treatments. It is usually from an interpretation of the world through the perspective of the observed subjects that the meaning of reality is revealed when using a qualitative approach to research. But it is precisely on these points that there is opposition between the principles of quantitative methods and those of qualitative methods. Many economics researchers consider the quantitative approach insufficient to meet current needs. For them, research in economics should make more use of a methodological approach where there is communication and a deep understanding between the subjects observed and the subjects who observe .An analysis like the one just made can be interpreted, at first glance, as a plea for the qualitative method which, in itself, hydroponic gutter should be considered as the best way to reach the reality of the social world. that we want to study. In these epistemological arguments, we must rather see an incentive to stop doubting the seriousness of this approach. “Qualitative” researchers in agricultural economics are only beginning to make a dent in the unanimity often expressed in favor of the superiority of quantitative research methods. All this debate ultimately results only from the choice of the paradigm made by the researchers .

One may wonder whether we are in the process of undergoing, in the field of agricultural sciences, what Kuhn calls a scientific revolution. One fact remains: qualitative research is not close to supplanting quantitative research, but the first is emerging more and more so that the two approaches come together almost regularly. How to explain this change of situation almost spectacular? The answer can come again from Kuhn’s book. Indeed, for Kuhn, any scientific group eventually develops a paradigm of its own and, when this paradigm no longer meets the needs of the group of researchers who use it, it is replaced by a new paradigm. Since the term paradigm has been widely used in scientific circles for a few years, the meaning of this term needs to be clarified here. This is all the more justified because Master man has found in Kuhn’s work twenty-one different ways of using the word paradigm. According to Kuhn,the term paradigm can be used in two different senses. On the one hand, it represents the whole set of beliefs, recognized values and techniques that are common to members of a given group.On the other hand, it denotes an isolated element of this set: the solutions of concrete enigmas which, used as models or examples, can replace the explicit rules as bases of solution for the riddles that remain in the so-called normal science .

It is therefore important to remember that a paradigm is fundamentally a way of seeing the world, a general perspective, a way of breaking down the complex reality of the real universe. As such, paradigms are deeply present in the socialization of paradigm researchers as well as practitioners since they tell them what is important and reasonable to study.Moreover, paradigms are normative; they tell practitioners and researchers what they must do without the need for them to go through long existential or epistemological considerations. However, this aspect of the paradigm is at the same time its strength and its weakness. He is his strength because he makes action possible; it is its weakness because the very reason for the action is hidden in the postulates not put into question in the paradigm.Adherence to a particular paradigm rather than another predisposes the partisan of a paradigm to see the world and the events contained in it in a very different way.