16(3). 03. Strategies to Interrogate Dissonance with Mixed Methods Research

Description

Author

Elizabeth G. Creamer

School of Education, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, VA, USA

 

Abstract

A small subset of the methodological literature has investigated how researchers have grappled with dissonant findings that sometimes emerge when working with both quantitative and qualitative data. Absent from this discussion is consideration of dissonance that emerges from a clash between quantitative findings and the researcher’s assumptions embedded in a theoretical framework, within mixed methods studies. This methodological article reports on the findings from an exploratory content analysis of 11 mixed methods studies that encountered such dissonance during an initial stage and followed this stage with additional data collection and/or analysis. The in-depth case-based analyses presented here expose differences between studies that addressed dissonance by adding (a) a qualitative phase or (b) both a qualitative phase and a phase devoted to merging both qualitative and quantitative data, often through a joint display. Findings suggest that researchers will benefit by considering the process of exploring dissonant findings as a series of steps rather than using a single strategy. Furthermore, the findings in this article contest the assumption that designing a research project with a theoretical framework rules out the possibility of including a robust exploratory component.