I'm about to do a section on why my mixed methods approach is SO great.

But I'm not really sure why it is :$

Anyone got any good references/books on the matter?

Hi Sneaks

A friend of mine successfully passed her viva just before Christmas :-). Before she submitted she had to put in a lot of extra work on why her mixed method approach was appropriate etc. I just skimmed her thesis and found a few references but not all of them appear in her bibliography:$ . Haven't read them myself so am not actually recommending them but they might give you a few new pointers. The Datta one (what a great surname to have for a reseracher!!) is available online and seems itself to have loads of references which might be handy.

Datta, L. (1994). Paradigm wars: A basis for peaceful coexistence and beyond. In C. S. Reichardt & S. F. Rallis (Eds.), The qualitative-quantitative debate: New perspectives (pp. 53-70). San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Greene, J. C. (2008) Is Mixed Methods Social Inquiry a Distinctive Methodology? Journal of Mixed Methods Research 2, 7-22.

Beyond these there is The Journal of Mixed Methods Research which you probably are already aware of.

Hi,

I have been using: Cresqell, J. & Clark, Designing and conducting mixed methods Research (2nd edition) Sage Publications £27.99

It pretty good and quite easy, cant remember what your area is but another good one I have been using is Research methods in education - cohen, manion, morrison that looks at triangulating the results. Have you also considered the MRC framework if the write area as give a pathway research should take and reason why you need to use mixed methods.

Good luck, I got write this chapter in a bit
:-(

Thanks Ady! I'm dreading this bit, I think its going to be the worst bit of the entire thesis to write :-(

have you had a look at this? there is a whole section on mixed methods...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1412965578/ref=oss_product

ooh Ill have a look at all these. I've just had help from walminkski from the past - searched through my emails and there's a book he sent me a while ago :-)

I still haven't chosen my 'stance' though - which is probably awful for this stage in the research. I think I'm a positivist (?)

the book I already mentioned also has a good section on all the stances... It's better than most other sources, as I find writing on stances in most books impossible to understand.

I think it's difficult to try and figure it out though, since it's rather an abstract thing! I'm still trying to get the difference between positivism and postpositivism!!

I've just downloaded the creswell book. I've read a few pages and now think I'm a pragmatist. So confusing!

I'm not supposed to be doing PhD work today either!

I know what you mean, I have the same thing, two weeks ago, I had a little crisis when I thought my work was qual rather than quan all of a sudden... but then it turned out that I kind of missunderstood something along the line and went back to quan. I think the more I read, the more I get confused!

thanks pink numbers. I've also got a struggle categorising previous theories in my field. I can't find anything that says XYZ theory is positivist for example, so I'm just having to guess - and feeling uneasy about it!

Im a confirmed classical pragmatist, it's what my supv says will get me my PhD, never mind what my topic is about! Not sure if I should be pleased or not! Seriously though, I have loads of readings on it - not all of which I have read, though I should have at this stage
:-(

ok, I'm not even sure I want to know what a 'classical' pragmatist is.

I'm getting the impression from Creswell's book you CAN'T do mixed methods and be anything but a pragmatist - is this right?

I'm reading a mixed methods approach from another person in my department, but she claims she's positivist - although looking at her argument it makes me think she is actually a pragmatist but probably didn't realise that that exists??

going back to the 'why do mixed method', I found this which might help you in constructing arguments for mixed methods:

http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/tutorial/Sydenstricker/bolsa.html#Research%20Design

(go down to 'why mixed methods')

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My speedy elevator pitch for classical pragmatism is that it has a deeply rooted pluralism, it is anti-foundatinalist, anti-essentialist - essentially a philosophy which brackets experience through direct action. No distinction between thought and action, both are joined in experience and so on and so on...:-)

Forgot I had this one myself

Mixed Methods Research: A Research Paradigm Whose Time Has Come
http://www.aera.net/uploadedFiles/Journals_and_Publications/Journals/Educational_Researcher/Volume_33_No_7/03ERv33n7_Johnson.pdf
and

Below is the one of the references which should have been in my friend's bib!!

Burke Johnson, R. Onwuegbuzie, A, J. and Turner, L.A. (2007) Toward a Definition of Mixed Methods Research. Journal of Mixed Methods (2007), 1, (2)

Difficult to see how someone could do mixed methods and be able to claim that they were a true positivist (assuming it's a mix of qual and quant). Maybe if it is a mix of quant methods? Can one be a positivistic qualitiative researcher - is it not a contradiction in terms??

ooh ok from my brief readings I have these questions

1) can you be mixed methods and be anything other than a pragmatist?

2) what role does a pragmatist take as a researcher - in positivist I assume that I see the same as everyone else, but constructavism says depending on who you are you might see different stuff going on (that's my understanding anyway) so where's pragmatism on this?

3) once you've identified your stance, do you bang on about it later on, or do you just mention it in the methods and just get on with reporting the results 'as usual'