Methods Designs

Rationale for mixing
•
Consensus on terms and concepts
•
Research questions and their importance
•
Explanatory, exploratory, and triangulation designs
•
Additional thoughts and considerations
Rationale for Mixed
–
Methods
•
Why mix in the first place?
•
Quantitative = breadth
•
Qualitative = depth
Consensus?
Not Even in Mixed
–
Methods
•
Small and big disagreements
•
Statistical analysis, how much to mix…
•
A lengthy undertaking
No Hard Answers, But Some Direction
•
Questions guide your
designs
•
Questions guide the
collection of data
•
Questions guide your
analyses
From Questions to Design
•
What makes for good mixing?
•
Aren’t descriptive statistics acceptable?
•
Do I need to actually define a design or can I just
incorporate methods like surveys, interviews, and
focus groups?
Explanatory
•
Personal reflections…
•
Where’s the emphasis?
•
Why?
•
Design:
–
Quantitative data collected followed by qualitative data collection;
qualitative analysis helps explain quantitative results
Quantitative data
collected
Qualitative helps to
analyze
quantitative results
Qualitative data
collected
Exploratory
•
Where’s the emphasis?
•
Why?
•
Design:
–
Qualitative data collected; then quantitative collected; quantitative
analysis explains qualitative results
Qualtitative data
collected
Quantitative helps
to analyze
qualitative results
Quantitative data
collected
Qualitative and
quantitative collected
together and then
analyzed together!
Triangulation
•
Triangulation is corroboration
•
Where’s the emphasis?
•
Why?
•
Design:
–
Quantitative and qualitative data collected and analyzed then both
quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques are used to explain the
results
Wait a Minute?
•
Terminology!
Wrap
–
Up:
Final Thoughts and Critical Questions
•
When mixing methods, is there a good rationale provided by the
researcher? What is it?
•
What are the guiding questions and, if relevant, hypotheses?
•
How has reliability and validity been addressed within the study? (Hint:
the principles within each approach are the same).
•
What approach ultimately was taken? Why? Does it align with the
research questions?
•
Are there appropriate designs identified? If not, why? Can you identify
the designs if they are not identified?
•
What analytical methods are appropriate to it all?