This volume is about the insights, joys, and challenges of mixed-methods research. It is written by and for social scientists, whether novices thinking about their first research project or seasoned researchers who secretly sense they are missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. Most researchers, within and beyond academia, come from a disciplinary-methodology comfort zone. For people trained in psychology or sociology, the methodological bias tends to be for standardized surveys and controlled experiments that yield ...
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This volume is about the insights, joys, and challenges of mixed-methods research. It is written by and for social scientists, whether novices thinking about their first research project or seasoned researchers who secretly sense they are missing some crucial piece of the puzzle. Most researchers, within and beyond academia, come from a disciplinary-methodology comfort zone. For people trained in psychology or sociology, the methodological bias tends to be for standardized surveys and controlled experiments that yield numbers in response to particular stimulus that can compared to other findings from the research conducted elsewhere. For people trained in anthropology, the methodological bias tends to be for observations and interviews in naturally occurring contexts that yield ethnographic descriptions and narratives that are difficult to compare across societies. The authors in this volume, many of whom were trained in single-method silos, all have reached out to embrace multiple mixed methods in their work, which enables the collection of generalizable and contextualized data simultaneously. But is it really worth the effort it takes to go past our methodological comfort zones? The authors in this book answer with a resounding "Yes!" They demonstrate that mixed methods is more than worth the effort--it can lead to more interesting findings than either qualitative or quantitative methods alone.
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