Integración de la investigación cualitativa en el estudio de la vulnerabilidad social y el éxito educativo

Introduction: The impact of policies or programs on poverty and social vulnerability has been studied mainly in our context from economics or sociology based on comparative studies and quantitative experimental designs. Instead, our interest is to focus on the use of qualitative methodologies that, from the areas of social pedagogy, social education, or social work, can provide evidence of the impact of these phenomena on people's well-being. Goals: 1) to show the functionality and value provided by qualitative methodology in mixed designs in educational research, and 2) exemplify the applicability of qualitative research, both in exploratory and confirmatory phases, of research designs in education and evaluation of socio-educative actions. Methods: we present three investigations framed in the CaixaProinfacia program, a social project that cares for children living in poverty in Spain. The three studies have in common that they used qualitative techniques in their early phases, including, for the most part, semi-structured interviews, and focus groups. The first research aims to identify the factors of educational success in contexts of relative poverty; the second study seeks to observe the emerging needs in the context of COVID-19 in children and their families living in poverty and, finally, the third study aims to build a scale to assess family social vulnerability. Application: The results of these three qualitative investigations have allowed us to advance and deepen our knowledge of the phenomena studied from the perspective of the subjects themselves, obtaining a consensus or theoretical framework that has been statistically validated in a subsequent phase of the studies. Conclusions: We find that the integration of qualitative research in mixed research designs allows us to understand holistically the complexity of educational and social phenomena.