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This article addresses the merits of and warrants for considering mixed methods social inquiry as a distinctive methodology. In each of four methodological domains—philosophy, methodology, practical guidelines, and sociopolitical commitments—the status of the mixed methods field is reviewed. Signal accomplishments are noted in each domain, as are impor-tant priorities for further development.

This paper is focused on validity in mixed methods research or what we refer to more broadly as mixed research. However, to understand the validity issue (i.e., quality) in mixed research, a brief review of some related discussions in quantitative and qualitative research will be helpful for orientation. Because these issues have been discussed elsewhere in great detail, we provide only brief summaries of those literatures, but first we want to make a few introductory comments about our general approach to research validity or quality. We try to take a "middle of the road" position, seeing some truth and insight to be gained from multiple perspectives. Our approach is only one among many, and we recommend that readers examine additional perspectives as more work is carried out in this emerging area in mixed methods research as well as in the more traditional areas of qualitative and quantitative research quality. The "validity" issue, at least as we use the term, is not about singular truths, and it certainly is not limited to quantitative measurement; rather, by validity we mean that a research study, its parts, the conclusions drawn, and the applications based on it can be of high or low quality, or somewhere in between. Research needs to be defensible to the research and practice communities for whom research is produced and used. The arbiters of research quality will be the research stakeholders, which means that the quality or validity issue can have subjective, intersubjective, and objective components and influences. At the same time, research is something about which we can "rationally" speak, and usually, after considering our external and our internal or epistemic standards, we can meaningfully assert that some research is of higher quality for certain purposes than is other research We aim our sense of justification at the research community that sees many advantages to sometimes using both qualitative and quantitative research in their single or highly related sets of research studies. One of the exciting results of much mixed research is that in a single study practical questions can be addressed, different perspectives can be examined, and if well documented, practitioners can obtain some sense of what might be useful in their local situations. We do not want to oversell mixed research, however; the evidence will be in the results. If mixed research produces useful results over time, as well as useful theory, then progress will have been made. We agree with Kurt Lewin's statement that "There is nothing so practical as a good theory" (Lewin, 1952, p. 169), and we hope that all researchers, including mixed researchers, will attempt to produce good theories and other research works. Validity in Quantitative Research In quantitative research, discussions of "validity" have been common and the importance of validity has been long accepted, and this is well documented in the literature. Building on the seminal works of Campbell and Stanley Another very important work in validity in quantitative research is found in Shadish, Validity in Qualitative Research In the qualitative research paradigm, a primary focus is for researchers to capture authentically the lived experiences of people. As noted by 2 Denzin and Lincoln (2005) also argue for "a serious rethinking of such terms as validity, generalizability, and reliability, terms already retheorized in postpositivist…, constructivist-naturalistic…, feminist…, interpretive…, poststructural…, and critical…discourses. This problem asks, 'How are qualitative studies to be evaluated in the contemporary, poststructural moment? '" (pp. 19-20). 3, 4 Part of their solution to the "validity issue" has been to reconceptualize traditional quantitative validity concepts and to use labels that are more acceptable to qualitative researchers Another useful classification for validity in qualitative research was provided by

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Mixed methods research that combines qualitative and quantitative approaches is an emergent method that is achieving increasing acceptance and use across disciplines. Despite the importance of funding to the adoption of a new research approach, there is no clear understanding of U.S. funding agencies ’ support for mixed methods. This study examines recent trends in health-related mixed methods projects funded by the National Institutes of Health and similar federal agencies. The results indicate that mixed methods projects are getting funded and their numbers are increasing but that their prevalence is still low overall. The nature of the projects indicates that researchers are adopting many conventions of the field of mixed methods research and planning approaches that integrate advanced qualitative and quantitative designs and procedures. The article concludes with recommendations to enhance the dynamic relationship between researchers’ decisions to propose mixed methods studies and existing extramural funding mechanisms. Keywords mixed methods, funding trends, emergent methods, integration, health sciences Although researchers have combined qualitative data with quantitative data for many years, current conceptualizations of mixed methods research did not emerge until the 1980s

This article highlights the potential value of mixed methods designs for social justice research in counseling, psychology, and related human services professions. Though representing only a small minority of research designs used in these fields, mixed methods approaches are gaining in popularity. A rationale for the use of mixed methods research in the human services generally, and multicultural/social justice counseling specifically, is presented. Various mixed methods designs are reviewed, examples of published mixed methods multicultural research are highlighted, and a flow diagram to determine whether or not to incorporate a mixed method design for a particular study is put forth. Limitations of mixed methods designs are also acknowledged.

This mixed methods study with an Explanatory Design is an exploration of students ’ language learning motivation as it relates to their attrition from a language immersion program. A total of 131 students who had graduated from five public elementary immersion schools responded to surveys, and 33 of those students were interviewed. Data analysis procedures included a theme analysis of the interview data, a statistical analysis of the survey data, and an integrated consid-eration of the qualitative and quantitative findings. It was found that mixed methods research can be uniquely revealing about social psychological constructs such as motivation, it can offer new perspectives where previous studies were contradictory, and it can accommodate multiple theoretical frameworks. Keywords mixed methods research, motivation, second/foreign language learning, language immersion programs, K-12 education McInerney (1998) has stated that the examination of the construct of motivation presents an ‘‘emic-etic dilemma,’ ’ where researchers face a choice between a quantitative ontology and epis-temology (where everyone is presumed to be motivated by the same forces irrespective of cul-tural background) and qualitative ontology and epistemology (wherein motivation is culture and/ or learner specific, and there are no generalities; 1998, p. 3; see also Ushioda, 2009). The use of psychometric research techniques to validate motivational characteristics, McInerney and col-leagues have argued, artificially limits the range of what is investigated by researchers (Dowson

Increasingly, Canadian educators are being told that literacy development can occur across subject areas of the curriculum. Few studies have focused on whether this applies to core French as a second language (CF). This article reports on a mixed method case study investigating the literacy teaching practices and accompanying influential factors of one Ontario primary core French teacher whose activities, strategies and perspectives demonstrate the potential for CF instruction to echo literacy principles taught in homeroom English (L1) classrooms, and for both languages to benefit. Context-specific factors that can encourage and/or hinder literacy teaching in the CF context will also be discussed.

Reports of qualitative studies typically do not offer much information on the numbers of respondents linked to any one finding. This information may be especially useful in reports of basic, or minimally interpretive, qualitative descriptive studies focused on surveying a range of experiences in a target domain, and its lack may limit the ability to synthesize the results of such studies with quantitative results in systematic reviews. Accordingly, the authors illustrate strategies for deriving plausible ranges of respondents expressing a finding in a set of reports of basic qualitative descriptive studies on antiret-roviral adherence and suggest how the results might be used. These strategies have limitations and are never appropriate for use with findings from interpre-tive qualitative studies. Yet they offer a temporary workaround for preserving and maximizing the value of information from basic qualitative descriptive

In this multi-stage mixed analysis study, the views of 437 Hispanic students enrolled at two Hispanic-Serving Institutions in the Southwest were obtained concerning characteristics of effective elementary school teachers. Through the method of constant comparison (qualitative phase), 20 dominant themes were determined to be present in respondents ’ characteristics of effective elementary school teachers. A factor rotation revealed the presence of five meta-themes: