Mixed Methods

Mixed methods research has become one of the major areas of growth in social research methodology in the last 10 years. The divisions between quantitative and qualitative research have increasingly given way to imaginative ways of combining the two approaches and a growing acceptance of adopting a multi-method approach. Much of the literature on mixed-methods research is highly dispersed in a wide variety of journals and other publications. A great deal of it is not well known and quite a lot of it is inaccessible. Alan Bryman, widely recognized as an authority on the subject, brings together the key articles in this important field to form a definitive resource collection. Volume I outlinines the epistemological and ontological issues relating to the debate about quantitative and qualitative research and how these have an impact on the possibility of mixing methods. Volume II is concerned with the combination of different methods within quantitative research and within qualitative research. Volume III addresses the methodological issues involved in combining quantitative and qualitative research - the different ways in which mixed-methods research is actually accomplished. Volume IV continues the kinds of material used in Volume III but will also include some examples of combining quantitative and qualitative research.