Mixed Method Research Methods

Mixed Method Research

• Integrates both quantitative and qualitative data and strategies within a single study.
• Many areas of inquiry benefit from triangulating quantitative and qualitative data, making mixed methods necessary for some questions.
• Pragmatism enriches certain areas of inquiry.

Advantages

• Complementarity
• Practicality
• Enhanced validity

Purposes and Applications of Mixed Method Research

• Used for instrument development.
• Used for intervention development.
• Used for hypothesis generation and testing.
• Used for theory building, testing, and refinement.
• Used for explication.

Mixed Method Designs and Strategies

• Approaches can be concurrent or sequential.

Key terms

• Concurrent: Qualitative and quantitative data are collected simultaneously.
• Sequential: Qualitative and quantitative data are collected in phases.

Notation system

• QUAL/quan refers to qualitative
• QUAN/qual refers to data being collected through quantitative and qualitative data
• QUAL/QUAN refers to data being collected through qualitative analysis

Specific Mixed Method Designs

• Convergent parallel design aims to obtain different, but complementary data about a central phenomenon to triangulate data sources.
• Explanatory design is sequential, collecting quantitative data first, then qualitative data.
• Exploratory designs are sequential MM designs that start with qualitative data.

Other Special Types of Research

• Intervention Research includes clinical trials, evaluation research, and nursing intervention research.
• Health services and outcomes research
• Survey research
• Quality improvement studies
• Secondary analysis
• Delphi surveys
• Methodologic research

Clinical Trials

• Develop clinical interventions and test their efficacy and effectiveness.
• Evaluate innovative therapies or drugs, often in phases.

Phases of a Full Clinical Trial

• Phase I establishes safety, tolerance, and dosage.
• Phase II seeks preliminary evidence of effectiveness through a pilot test, often using a quasi-experimental design.
• Phase III fully tests treatment efficacy via a randomized clinical trial (RCT), often at multiple sites; referred to as an efficacy study.
• Phase IV focuses on external validity of an intervention within the general population, emphasizing generalizability.

Practical Clinical Trials

• Emphasis on EBP has led to a call for studies bridging the gap between efficacy and effectiveness studies.
• Practical clinical trials (or pragmatic clinical trials) aid real-world decision-making.
• Pragmatism in MM research provides the basis for the research question.

Evaluation Research

• Examines the effectiveness of a specific program, practice, procedure, or policy.

Evaluation Research Analysis

• Process analysis obtains descriptive information about program implementation.
• Economic analysis assesses whether program benefits outweigh monetary costs.

Nursing Intervention Research

• A distinctive process of planning, developing, and testing inventions is described.
• Especially complex interventions.

Nursing Intervention Research Phases

• Basic developmental research.
• Pilot research.
• Efficacy research.
• Effectiveness research.

Health Services Research

• Documents the quality and effectiveness of health care and nursing services.
• Focuses on Donabedian's health care quality model.

Key concepts of the health care model

• Structure of care (e.g., nursing skill mix).
• Processes (e.g., clinical decision making).
• Outcomes (end results of patient care).

Outcome Research

• Outcome Research is a subset of health services research
• Efforts are made in order to understand the end results of health care practices and to assess effectiveness.
• Represents a response to increasing demands from policy makers and the public to improve patient outcomes and costs.

Survey Research

• Obtains quantitative information through self-reports with a central focus on prevalence, distribution, and interrelations variables
• Used primarily in correctional studies and for gathering information from nonclinical populations
• Seeks information about actions, knowledge, intentions, characteristics, opinions and attitudes of people

Modes of Collecting Survey Data

• Personal (face-to-face) interviews.
• Telephone interviews.
• Self-administered questionnaires.
  • Distributed by mail or the Internet.
• Personal interviews yield the highest quality data but are expensive

Secondary Analysis

• A method that studies previously gathered data in order to address new questions.
• Data can be qualitative or quantitative.
• Cost-effective because original data collection is expensive and time-consuming.
• The secondary analyst may be unaware of data quality problems.

Delphi Surveys

• Developed as a tool for short-term forecasting.
• Experts complete several rounds of questionnaires about a specific topic.
• Multiple iterations aim to achieve consensus.

Methodologic Research

• Focus is on developing, validating, and evaluating research tools and instruments.
• Can involve collecting qualitative or quantitative data.

Examples of methodologic research

• Developing and testing a new data collection instrument
• Testing the effectiveness of stipends in facilitating recruitment