Description

Author

L. K. Cain, A. L. MacDonald, J. M. Coker, J. C. Velasco, and G. D. West

(University of South Florida, Tampa, FL, USA)

Abstract

We examine the ways in which mixed methods researchers have discussed ethical considerations and reflexivity within their published work over the past 5 years. To identify a corpus of studies in which reflexivity and ethics could be expected to be described, we conducted a modified systematic review combined with simple random sampling. This effort led to our selecting 322 articles that we examined for discussions of ethicality and reflexivity. Our findings indicated that mixed methods researchers are generally not describing these topics within their published works. From these articles, we identified the following 4 themes related to how researchers referred to ethics: Ethics as Defined by an Institutional Review Board (IRB), Data Quality as a Measure of Ethics, Ethics as Defined by Theory, and Social Justice-Minded Ethics. We identified 3 additional themes related to how researchers referred to reflexivity: Positionality, Reflexivity as a Methodological Consideration, and Efforts to Minimize Bias. We argue that describing ethics and reflexivity are of the utmost importance because high-quality methodological practice requires reflexivity and demonstration of ethical inquiry to establish credibility and legitimation. We also argue that transparency around ethical- and reflexivity-related decision making can strengthen writing and promote clarity when dealing with typically complex designs.