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Mixed Methods

Variants of mixed-methods research design, that is, the combination of qualitative and quantitative components within one single research design, have been practiced since the beginnings of the social and related sciences and before the complex construct mixed-methods research was conceived. It could be argued that in the first half of the 20th century, the combination within one research project of what was subsequently referred to as qualitative and quantitative research was not unusual, at least for well-known studies such as Samuel A. Stouffer and colleagues’ American Soldier (1949), Theodor Adorno and colleagues’ Authoritarian Personality (1950), and most types of psychometric measurement and scaling procedures during this time. Only in the 1990s did researchers begin to systematize this research approach and design to the extent to which it became explicitly and systematically studied and applied. In this second wave of conceptualization and application, Abbas Tashakkori, Charles Teddlie, John Creswell, Julia Brannen, and Alan Bryman were most influential in establishing this type of research design. It is often proclaimed that a third generation of mixed-methods studies is about to emerge. Some optimistic predictions include the replacement of mono-method studies by mixed-methods studies, research becoming more ethical or democratic due to the integration of different methods and perspectives, the ability to access a phenomenon under investigation objectively due to the combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, and new ways of conceiving, collecting, and analyzing data that are no longer identifiable as qualitative or quantitative in nature. The field of mixed-methods research is indeed changing, but the third generation is most likely to rectify some of the simplifications and misconceptions that have established themselves in the past 3 decades, due in part to various attempts to establish separate, that is, qualitative and quantitative “paradigms” and the resulting incompatibility thesis. This entry discusses definitions, forms, applications, and further developments of mixed-methods research.

Nomenclature

Although now well established, the use of the term mixed-methods design is not ubiquitous. One contender is methods triangulation. A shortcoming of this term is that it implies only studies in which the results of the qualitative and quantitative parts converge or verify each other. Under certain circumstances, this may indeed be of interest, but there are other possibilities of mixing methods unrelated to triangulation. Another alternative is using words such as combining, blending, synthesizing, or merging instead of mixing because, strictly speaking, qualitative and quantitative methods are not mixed but rather combined in different ways and for different purposes. Despite these alternative proposals, mixed-methods research design is now the accepted nomenclature for this kind of design.

Two related designs should be mentioned briefly. Multimethod design is the label given to research designs that combine at least two different quantitative or two different qualitative methods within one research project. Accordingly, a multimethod quantitative design consists of at least two distinct quantitative components, while multimethod qualitative design consists of distinct qualitative components within one research design. Finally, mixed model design describes a research design that combines quantitative and qualitative components across all phases of the research process, where it ostensibly is no longer possible to clearly distinguish between the qualitative and quantitative contributions to the overall research results. However, it is questionable whether the research components that most authors refer to in this context can indeed be clearly attributed to the quantitative or qualitative component. Thus, mixed model design is best used for research designs where the quantitative and qualitative components are intertwined such that they are no longer clearly separable or where the line of demarcation between quantitative and qualitative research components becomes indistinguishable.

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