Abstract
This issue of JRN, guest-edited by Professor Janna Lesser, focuses on mixing methods of data collection and analysis: it contains Janna’s guest editorial, four papers, their respective commentaries and a perspective. Three of the papers (Haas et al., Ivankova and Koldoff) stem from presentations given at a conference on patient engagement funded by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) in Washington DC. The fourth paper (Yanchus et al.) teases out an approach to re-analysis that illustrates two different and complementary ways of analysing qualitative data. Freshwater’s closing perspectives article rounds off the issue by bringing us up to date on mixed methods research and nursing. This collection is designed to help readers to consider how best to mix methods of data collection and analysis to gain the most from the situations that are studied and the data that are generated.
Our mixing methods title echoes the words used by Ann Oakley in her paper published almost two decades ago. Here Oakley (1999) described her methodological career journey and proposed that mixing qualitative and quantitative methods may lead to better insights into the situations that social scientists research. By introducing these thoughts here and later extending them in her book (Oakley, 2000), Oakley inspired researchers to talk about and review their methodological positions, to be bolder and more flexible about the techniques they used and to be less daunted by changing paradigmatic loyalties or methodological fixations.
Despite being an unusual approach 20 years ago, it was clear that mixing methods offered the potential to answer research questions more comprehensively and differently, and as such to make some research more meaningful. To ensure this, researchers had to work out how to ‘… integrate the collection and analysis of “qualitative” and “quantitative” data so as to arrive at an interpretation which makes productive use of both’ (Oakley, 1999: 251) and thereby mix their methods so that they used each to its best advantage within the context of the research. At the time, some may have feared that Oakley would open up a Pandora’s box of research monstrosities or paradigm wars, but this was not the case. Instead, she and other colleagues of the time catalysed a quiet emergence of researchers open to the value of both qualitative and quantitative approaches, who recognised that in some studies their integration rather than their separation was the key to success.
Today mixing methods is better known as mixed methods research (MMR) and is commonplace; it can perhaps be described as a paradigm in its own right, neither feared nor derided by researchers or research funders. However, despite these advances in MMR’s acceptance and sophistication, the keys to success remain in the iteration between, the integration of, and the interpretation of the quantitative and qualitative elements of any MMR study; only when these stages have been undertaken can the findings be used in practice, policy, education and future research.