From Opposition to Integration

The innovation of the mixed-methods research

Why do the researchers think that the research is innovative? The reason is that in a long term the qualitative and quantitative approaches are exclusive in one research. It is a clear manifestation that the aims and methods of these two approaches are seen as fundamentally incompatible.

From a constructivist perspective, controlled experimental studies are contrived settings that deprive participants of autonomy and social contexts that bestow meanings to their actions.

In the same way, the pre-determined measures used to measure attitudes and beliefs prevent respondents from expressing alternative or contradictory viewpoints, and therefore their responses are being manipulated by the researcher’s conception.

At best, scientific research ventures creating unnatural situations in which behavior can be predicted and controlled but that have minimal connection to the real situation in non-experimental contexts.

In the worst case, scientific research may overlook the influences of socio-cultural and political contexts (Gergen, 1992).

From a positivist point of view, constructivist research lacks scientific validity as mirrored by the failure of a lot of qualitative researches to adopt rigorous approaches of excluding biased or fallacious notions, whether of the researchers or the participants.

In addition to the prejudice held by both the proponents and the opponents of each approach that confront each other, there is still a space for the possibility to adopt the two methods together.

Whether this research combines two methods productively or not, the attempt to combine the two methods reveals the open-minded trait of the researchers.

Reference List

Gregen, K.J. (1992) Toward a postmodern psychology. In S.Kvale (ed.), Psychology and postmodernism, London, Sage, pp.17–30.

Originally published at http://poeticmindfulness.wordpress.com on September 25, 2020.