Mixed methods research is all the rage right now in graduate school. Newly-hired professors and doctoral students are increasingly being pressured to do mixed methods research studies. But what exactly are mixed methods research studies? And why are they trending? I will answer both these questions in this blog post.
Although mixed methods research has been around a long time, much of academia agrees that it is the venerable John W. Creswell who has put forth the best guidance as to how to correctly conduct mixed methods studies. Although Creswell has published several rather involved books on the subject over the years, this blog post will focus on what he says in his shorter book, “A Concise Introduction to Mixed Methods Research” published in 2021.
Mixed Methods Research: What is it Exactly?
Prior to encountering the Creswell literature, my understanding of mixed methods studies were simply studies that had a qualitative component and a quantitative component. For example, Dörnyei and Ushioda recommended mixed methods studies when doing research on what motivates students learning a foreign language. Specifically, they recommended gathering quantitative data through surveys and psychometric instruments, and also gathering qualitative data by interviewing students about what motivates them as they are engaging in second language learning.
However, Creswell has a more nuanced approach. He says that the point of doing mixed methods research is to at some point combine the findings from the qualitative and quantitative studies and engage in meta-inference – which means coming up with overall take-home messages from the combination of these two research modalities that would not be possible to derive from either one alone.
If this is hard for you to visualize from this simple explanation, you are not alone. I also didn’t really understand what Creswell meant by this from his basic description. However, what helped me understand was when he described the three core study design used in mixed methods research, which I will repeat here.
Three Core Mixed Methods Study Designs
Creswell emphasizes in his book that there are not only three mixed methods study designs, and encourages the reader to get creative and push the boundaries of mixed methods designs so they adequately fit the research questions posed by the researcher. But if you are a doctoral student, or are otherwise new to mixed methods study designs, it’s best to start with one of these three core designs, which I will summarize here.
Convergent Design
In the convergent design, the qualitative and quantitative data are gathered separately, but are meant to “converge” into an overall understanding. To carry on with the Dörnyei and Ushioda example, imagine you were a high school French teacher to students who grew up the United States (US) speaking English. To understand how their motivation to learn French related to how well they were doing in your class:
- You might gather quantitative data through noting their grades on assignments and exams, and by asking them to fill out instruments to measure motivation to learn a second language, like the Attitude/Motivation Test Battery (AMTB).
- You might gather qualitative data through interviewing students about how motivated they were, what strategies they used to learn French, and how they thought that related to their performance in your class.
Creswell recommends making diagrams to explain your study design. Here is an example of a convergent design diagram that reflects the hypothetical mixed methods study described above.
Explanatory Sequential Design
In the explanatory sequential design, first you gather quantitative data, and on the basis of what you find from the quantitative data, you gather qualitative data. As an example, imagine you were the director of a clinic.
- First, you start by administering a routine patient satisfaction survey (like the one Press Ganey uses) as your quantitative data. The Press Ganey survey covers the following domains: the care provider, the nurse or assistant, personal issues, overall assessment, access, and moving through the visit. After analyzing the results, you see that there are low scores on “personal issues” and “access”.
- Next, you would conduct interviews with patients to gather qualitative data. Your interviews could focus on why the ratings for “personal issues” and “access” were so low.
Here is a figure that reflects this hypothetical explanatory sequential design mixed methods study.
Exploratory Sequential Design
Finally, we have the exploratory sequential design. In this design, qualitative data are gathered first and analyzed, and the results inform the collection and analysis of the quantitative data. Imagine you work in the marketing department at a business which is carrying a new product. The product is a new invention, so it is hard to gauge what customers will think about it.
- First, you can hold a focus group of potential customers to gather and analyze qualitative data about the product.
- Once you analyze the themes of what the focus group discusses, based on that, you can develop a survey about the product and send it out to your customer base for feedback to collect and analyze quantitative data.
Here is a figure that reflects this hypothetical exploratory sequential design mixed methods study.
Why is Mixed Methods Research Trending?
If you are a true scientist, then you realize that study designs should not “trend”. Study designs exist to answer research questions, and depending upon your research question, you choose the proper study design. If you have a research question best answered by a qualitative approach, you should use that kind of study design. If you have a research question best answered through a quantitative approach, you should use that kind of study design.
As my description above shows, mixed methods research really only applies to very specific circumstances. So why are doctoral students being encouraged to shoehorn whatever research interests they have into a set of questions that can only be answered through mixed methods? And why are academics being advised to choose these mixed methods designs? After all, they are a lot of work, and have multiple phases. Such data-intensive study designs run the risk of never getting done – meaning that doctoral students are risking not graduating, and academics might get delayed in achieving tenure if they choose such a study design. So why is this type of design being promoted? After all, there is nothing new about it.
Here is my personal opinion: The reason why mixed methods designs are being promoted in academia is because of the pressure to publish. If you do a long, involved study that includes both qualitative and quantitative data collection, you might be able to squeeze multiple peer-reviewed publications out of one project. Academic leaders do not care about the value or appropriateness of the science produced. They aren’t interested in committing resources to sound research, or supporting students and professors who are engaging in research. All they care about is causing peer-reviewed publications to exist, and they erroneously believe that forcing everyone to do mixed methods studies will achieve this.
Of course, unless you really know what you are doing, embarking on a long mixed method study may backfire. If you don’t have much of a research background, you may end up with a bunch of data that mean nothing because you messed up the study design. You might have trouble analyzing one or both types of data you gather because you are unfamiliar with how. I think it’s really a bad idea for a college to try to force graduate students to do a mixed method study when – because they are students – they don’t have any experience. The likelihood of their success is low.
My opinion: Because colleges are greedy for publications, they pressure graduate students to do mixed methods studies, and put them at risk of not graduating. I think it’s unethical. What do you think?
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