¶ … mixed methods research simply taking half a quantitative plan and half of a qualitative plan and putting them together?" And an articulation of the challenges to using a mixed methods strategy of inquiry.
To what extent is mixed methods research simply taking half a quantitative plan and half of a qualitative plan and putting them together?
Mixed methods approaches blend aspects of both quantitative and qualitative research designs in their construction. For example, a study of the responses of incarcerated juveniles to a new program designed to reintegrate the adolescents back into society might use quantitative data regarding the recidivism rates of the participating vs. non-participating teens but would also contextualize the data with qualitative interviews with the teens themselves. A mixed methods approach would be justified given the need to determine the efficacy of the program in an objective fashion, particularly to justify its continued funding. However,...
A questionnaire might not fully take into consideration unexpected areas of concern generated by the new program.
It should be noted that some researchers consider these two methods of qualitative and quantitative state of inquiry to be fundamentally polarized: "purists posit that quantitative and qualitative methods stem from different ontologic, epistemologic and axiologic assumptions about the nature of research" (Onwuegbuzie & Leech 2005: 376). Others state that in the social sciences, there is no such thing as pure 'knowledge' distilled from subjective experience and thus the two approaches are fundamentally more similar than they seem. The existence of mixed methods approaches suggests that the two methods are fundamentally different yet both offer equally valid and useful perspectives.
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