Content area
Full text
Mixed methods research combines theoretical and/or technical aspects of quantitative and qualitative research within a particular study. This paper traces the historical development of mixed methods research, and delineates current post-positivist and constructivist paradigmatic perspectives. We describe the two major positions of mixed method advocates: the dialectic and the pragmatic. We identify five purposes for mixing methods and eight types of mixed method studies. Grounded in mixed method inquiry literature, the auttiors examine the benefits and tenets of mixed methods research, analyze how it is currently being reported in three studies published in the Information Technology, Learning, & P erformance Journal, and offer specific recommendations for clarifying written descriptions of methods used to collect and interpret data. We draw positive implications for the organizational systems field for clearly writing about mixed research methods in publications.
Few examples exist in the fields of human resource development, distance education, and foreign language education, of intentionally using the inquiry literature on mixing qualitative and quantitative methods in one research project. Standard texts, such as the widely used Gay and Airasiari (2000), barely include any reference to the use of both qualitative and quantitative methods in the same study. Greswell (1994), however, dedicates a chapter to combined qualitative and quantitative designs. Whether a researcher has read about mixed methods research or is aware that the literature exists, any researcher who has collected data that includes closed-ended items with numerical responses as well as open-ended items on the same survey (Tashakkori, Aghanjanian, & Mehryar, 1996) has conducted mixed methods research.
Mixed methods research is characterized as research that contains elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches (Brewer & Hunter, 1989; Howe, 1988; Miles & Huberman, 1984; Patton, 1990; Reichardt & Cook, 1979). More than 40 years ago, quantitative researchers Campbell and Fiske (1959) suggested mixing methods to accurately measure a psychological trait. Their call for multiple methods "to ensure that the variance was reflected in the trait and not in the method" (Creswell, 1994, p. 174) later expanded into what Denzin (1978) dubbed "triangulation."
Qualitative researchers, initially led by Denzin (1978; 1989) and Jick (1979) and later by others such as Patton (1990), continued the conceptual development of triangulation. Denzin (1989) advised, "By combining multiple observers, theories, methods,...