Mixed Methods Research and Its Applications Essay

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Introduction

There is a surprisingly wide scope for mixed methods of research. Trochim and Donnelly (2008) apply rather loosely the Patton model of mixed methods being available chiefly at the midpoint between naturalistic inquiry and experimental testing. To my mind, the authors contend in effect that mixed methods apply anywhere between the two extremes.

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Contexts

It is true enough that almost any research task is amenable to mixed methods as long as one is not at the stage of exploratory research or pure mathematical modeling. This is notably true when one views a research program, a progressive sequence of research investigations where exploratory research informs the scope of a follow-on field survey that, in turn, reveals some diagnostic puzzles that might be resolved by deeper grounded theory work than would have been possible at the beginning. Sequential but related studies are, in fact, very common in both commercial and sociological research programs, notwithstanding the fact that formal research designs typically articulate less than half the preparatory checklist steps Creswell suggests (2009, p. 205): numbers 2, 6, 9, and 10.

Take the fairly straightforward case of a penology investigation to assess the success of restorative justice schemes. The researcher might conduct post-hoc depth individual interviews with the victim, the offender, relatives and judicial officers who had been involved with different restitution strategies. Content analysis is then applied to the verbatim transcripts, employing either dual-judge manual coding or, more often these days, computer-aided programs like PROTAN, General Inquirer or TextPack (Content-analysis.de, 2009).

But no matter how rich the content analysis might prove to be and whether there is a “qualitative” consensus in terms of perceived success or not, the bottom line is that restorative justice should markedly reduce recidivism. Hence, quantitative desk research may simultaneously be carried out to assess proportions of repeat conviction and incarceration for a control population versus a test group that had experienced the restitution type of restorative justice.

The new product development cycle is always an opportunity for mixed methods running on parallel tracks or sequentially, as market response serves to refine the potential of options available across the entire marketing mix (Northern Illinois University, 2003). To take just one element, advertising strategy: the starting point is a high-potential and very competitive mix of product features matched against the benefits that end-users feel very strongly about.

Obviously, the former combined laboratory testing of own and rival products with thematic content analysis of competitive advertising; the latter is rich with clues about what motivations rival companies have discovered. Motivational research is employed to test the comparative appeal of alternative ad themes. This is followed by qualitative focus groups or theater tests to assess which of several ad executions convey the key benefit most compellingly. Finally, the TV commercial “goes live” in a test market of many weeks’ duration, the intent being to measure new-brand share of shelf movement over many repetitions of the consumer grocery-shopping cycle (Fader, Hardie, and Zeithammer, 2003).

Recap

In this concededly brief discussion, we have demonstrated that mixed methods are extremely enlightening and in fact much-used because of the complementarity of insight and predictive decision-making.

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References

Content-Analysis.de (2009). Resources related to content analysis and text analysis. Web.

Creswell, J. W. (2009). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Fader, P. S., Hardie, B. G. S., & Zeithammer, R. (2003). Forecasting new product trial in a controlled test market environment. Journal of Forecasting, 22 (5) 391-410.

Northern Illinois University (2003). Exploring information use in detail in the new product development process. Web.

Trochim, W., & Donnelly, J. (2008). The research methods knowledge base (3rd ed.). Mason, OH: Cengage.

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IvyPanda. (2021) 'Mixed Methods Research and Its Applications'. 3 November.

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IvyPanda. 2021. "Mixed Methods Research and Its Applications." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mixed-methods-research-and-its-applications/.

1. IvyPanda. "Mixed Methods Research and Its Applications." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mixed-methods-research-and-its-applications/.


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IvyPanda. "Mixed Methods Research and Its Applications." November 3, 2021. https://ivypanda.com/essays/mixed-methods-research-and-its-applications/.

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