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Recently several authors have criticized mixed methods research because it relegates qualitative research to secondary or auxiliary status, it expresses this status through experimental trials that privilege quantitative research, and it fails to employ critical, interpretive approaches to qualitative research. This paper is a response to this position, and we draw on leading qualitative and feminist researchers who advance the importance of mixed methods research. We also cite empirical mixed methods articles that give priority to qualitative research, as well as mixed methods studies that use critical interpretive approaches. Our overall argument is that qualitative research can enhance mixed methods research, and we give specific examples as illustrations.
Mixed methods research is both a methodology and a method, and it involves collecting, analyzing, and mixing qualitative and quantitative approaches in a single study or a series of studies (Creswell & Piano Clark, in press). Recent critics of this approach to inquiry argue that it largely serves the quantitative community, it relegates qualitative research to secondary status, and it strays too far from the interpretive foundation of qualitative research (Denzin & Lincoln, 2005; Howe, 2004). This thinking might come from the association these writers sometimes appear to make between mixed methods research and the experimental orientation to educational research as discussed in the No Child Left Behind Act (2001) and in the National Research Council (2002) report on the credibility of scientific research in education. This view is a limited, inaccurate, and stereotypic perspective about mixed methods research. Fueling their concerns are also a recent emphasis on "evidenced-based" research in education, and a perceived lack of quantitative training abroad, such as in the UK (Deem, 2002).
This paper is a much-needed response to recent critics of mixed methods research, and a challenge to their stance by suggesting that qualitative research can be prominent in mixed methods research rather than compromised by it. Seen in this way, mixed methods research is compatible with qualitative research, and through mixed methods inquiry, we have a much-needed democraticizing project valuable to inquirers in the social, behavioral, and human science communities. More specifically, we will address three concerns raised by these authors: that mixed methods pushes qualitative research to secondary or auxiliary status, that this secondary status is expressed...