Considering Quality in Mixed-Methods Research: The "Qualitative Handmaiden’s" Tale

• In Event: Reflections on Quality of Mixed-Methods Research From Multiple Perspectives

Abstract

Mixed methods scholars have long posited that qualitatively-grounded notions of quality are underrepresented when compared to their quantitatively-grounded counterparts. Hesse-Biber referred to this lack of representation, alongside an undercurrent of anti-qualitative sentiment found throughout mixed methods scholarship, as employing qualitative data and practices as handmaiden to quantitative–thereby only allowing qualitative work to be used in service to the main focus of the study: quantitative data. We sought to explore recent published empirical work from 2017-2022 within two leading mixed methods journals in order to understand if this argument was still accurate–and, unfortunately, found that quantitative quality components are used at much higher frequencies than qualitative notions of quality within mixed methods work.

Authors

• Leia K. Cain, University of Tennessee

• Gretchen Cook, University of Tennessee

• Meredith C. Massey, University of Tennessee