I could then screen the books for titles related to quantitative research. A manageable 75 results were retrieved. These were fairly easy to screen for relevant content, because Safari helpfully offers a short excerpt from every book where search terms were located. I was drawn to a quotation on page 266 that read: "Quantitative details can hurt qualitative understanding" from the book by Ruth C. Clark and Ann Kwinn entitled the new virtual classroom: Evidence-based guidelines for synchronous e-Learning (Pfeiffer, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-787-98652-0). This book examined how quantitative research had been used to validate and refine different approaches to online education.
Database 3: Google Books
Of all of the three databases I used in this experiment, Google Books was the one with which I was most familiar. I typed 'mixed methods research' into the easily navigated search bar and Google offered me a helpful prompt for the phrase, even before I had finished all of the letters of the phrase. 20,900 books were retrieved by Google on mixed methods research, all of which seemed pertinent to my generalized search, and almost all of which offered a limited preview for me to view, as if I were in a real-life library.
I selected the book Mixed methods research: Exploring the interactive continuum by Isadore Newman and Caroline Ridenour (SIU Press, 2007, ISBN: 0809327791, 9780809327799). Google's...
The main downside of the user-friendly Google approach is that the searcher has less flexibility in narrowing the search to specific terms, although this search was specific enough so that I was able to find works on my topic fairly easily.
Had I wished to specifically study mixed methods of research upon the subject of education, Google Books would still be useful search tool. Within the Newman and Ridenour book, I was able to search within the book on the topic of mixed methods of research in education: "In education, the paradigms of qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods research serve researchers' inquiry needs" stated the first result I retrieved, from page 13. I surveyed number of other selections from the book that further examined how data-driven and case-study approaches could be combined in mixed methods educational research.
References
Clark, Ruth C. & Ann Kwinn. (2007). The new virtual classroom: Evidence-based guidelines for synchronous e-Learning. Pfeiffer.
Newman, Isadore & Caroline Ridenour. (2007). Mixed methods research: Exploring the interactive continuum. SIU Press.
Sandelowski, Margarete & Julie Barroso. (2006). Handbook for synthesizing qualitative research. Springer Publishing Company.
