Description

Writing publishable mixed research articles: Guidelines for emerging scholars in the health sciences and beyond

NANCY L LEECH

Educational Psychology/Research Methods, School of Education and Human Development, University of Colorado, Denver, CO, USA

ANTHONY J ONWUEGBUZIE AND JULIE P COMBS

Department of Educational Leadership and Counseling, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA

ABSTRACT

In recent years, it has become more common for health science researchers to conduct and to write research reports and articles that involve the combining or mixing of quantitative and qualitative approaches within the same study. The purpose of this article is to delineate the challenges of writing mixed research studies and present a potential solution. The solution includes providing guidelines for writing mixed research that will be presented utilizing the framework designed by Leech and Onwuegbuzie (2010). Furthermore, examples of each step from a published mixed research study (Onwuegbuzie et al., 2007) will be presented. It is hoped that understanding these challenges in writing mixed methods reports and using the suggested guidelines will increase health science researchers’ ability to publish mixed methods research.

Keywords: mixed methods research, writing, guidelines for writing