The Paradigms and Philosophies of Mixed Methods research: a whistle stop tour!

Those who have been following my blog during the past few months shall have noticed that Mixed Methods has been selected as the most appropriate methodology, that the Convergent Parallel design has been selected as the most appropriate variety of Mixed Methods, and that the methods of data collection have been decided upon along with most of the data analysis methods. What hasn’t been thought about till recently is the Philosophy of Mixed Methods.

Mixed Methods methodology developed as a result of the paradigmatic wars between quantitative and qualitative approaches: authors back in the 1960s and 1970s were adamant that both entail differing Philosophical and Paradigmatic assumptions and therefore frame the research in ways that were not compatible with each other. However, reconciliation between differing paradigms began and accelerated during the 1980s where writers opposed this methodological dualism.

Paradigmatic and philosophical assumptions and perspectives are extensive and the debates of suitability have been ongoing since reconciliation attempts began, so they are complex fields (seriously I am not kidden here: I’ve been thinking about this for years and I still don’t know everything and never will) where there isn’t a right or wrong answer. All that can be achieved is a researcher understanding their own views of reality and work towards developing arguments as to why their research contains particular paradigmatic and philosophical assumptions and perspectives. Do bear with me as I continue to learn and develop paradigmatic and philosophical assumptions about my research relative to a Mixed Methods methodology and also relative to the selected methods. This has to be a careful, thoughtful process: I cannot just select things at random. These assumptions are important to consider because they provide the basis or framework for a mixed methods project, or any research project.

There are certain paradigms (frameworks of research) that I can safely discard and suggest that they are not relevant to my research. This includes the feminism paradigm, which focuses research around women’s rights and whilst I have a lot of respect for women and their rights, feminism is not a part of my research so shall no longer be considered. The other paradigm is the Transformative-Emancipatory developed by Mertens (2003), which focuses on the intersection between Mixed Methods methodology and social justice although there is an observation that this has overlapped somewhat with the feminism paradigm. When you think about what feminism really means (not the extremists who perceive feminism as a male hating agenda) and its relationship with social justice, this makes sense. However whilst I have an increasing interest in social justice and this might be considered in future research projects it is not a part of my research currently therefore shall not be considered any further.

Moving toward discussions of paradigms that are more relevant, there is a selection of paradigms in relation to Mixed Methods that are most relevant for my Ph.D. The first is the PostPositivism paradigm, developed out of criticism of Positivism and therefore views reality as probabilistically true where Positivism (the paradigm of Science) views reality as really true and fully independent of the mind. Whilst PostPositivism works with quantitative methods and methodologies it also works with qualitative approaches and many who identify themselves as PostPositivists do utilise Mixed Methods. Another paradigm that is well acquainted with Mixed Methods is Pragmatism. Key differences between this and PostPositivism can be found at the Epistemological level in that PostPositivism understands reality as a single reality that is probabilistically true and independent of the mind whilst Pragmatists view reality as containing elements that are accessible and independent of the mind as well as elements that are constructed and therefore dependent on the mind. From an epistemological perspective, Pragmatism already leans more towards Mixed Methods than PostPositivism. However, Pragmatism is not without its problems therefore the third paradigm that is being considered is Critical Realism where apparently it can reconcile Absolutism and Relativism perspectives at the ontological level, whereas Pragmatism reconciles at the epistemological level from what I can currently understand but this does not appear to be reported much in the literature from what I have read so far. According to Creswell and Clark (2011) Critical Realism adopts and supports characteristics from both quantitative and qualitative approaches, although the use of Critical Realism is not as common as Pragmatism. But it has to be remembered that just because Pragmatism might be used more than PostPositivism and Critical Realism it doesn’t mean that it’s any more relevant to my research and the context of my research.

Additionally there are Mixed Methods projects that use multiple world views or paradigms, referenced as a dialectical paradigm, instead of a single paradigm, and have been based on the way that a researcher views social reality. Further, there are approaches that involving using multiple paradigms not in relation to the way that the researcher views reality, but of the type of Mixed Methods being used. For more information on this, read Greene (2007) and Creswell and Clark (2011)

As a side note, this whole linking between Philosophy and Methodology has been experienced in my research so far. Previously I had chosen to adopt a Constructivist Grounded Theory as the methodology and this entailed Relativist ontology and a Constructivist epistemology. Switching the methodology to a Mixed Methods approach entails a Philosophical view that in some way combines or reconciles Absolutism and Relativism ontologies and therefore Positivism (or PostPositivism in Social Sciences) and Constructivism epistemologies. It would not have been acceptable to have continued with a Relativist paradigm given that my research contains methods that include the collection and analysis of quantitative data, which aligns with a different paradigm. This would have been identified and critiqued in the Upgrade Paper and especially in the thesis and the Vivo examination.

So, gosh that was a long post! In brief, the paradigms that are of most relevance to this research are: PostPositivism, Pragmatism and Critical Realism. These shall be discussed more as I explore them in relation to Mixed Methods and in the context of my own research!

References:

Creswell, J.W., Plano Clark, V.L (2011): Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (2^nd Ed). SAGE: America

Greene, J.C (2007): Mixed Methods in Social Inquiry. Jossey-Boss: San Francisco

Mertens, D.M (2009): Transformative Research And Evaluations, Guilford Press: New York

Alex Darracott : 22 Feb 2016 14:23 |  Tags: Design Epistemology Methodology Paradigm Philosophy |  Comments (0) |  Report a problem