Reported Methodological Challenges in Empirical Mixed Methods Articles: A Review on JMMR and IJMRA

Abstract

As integration in mixed methods studies is of great interest, we reviewed published articles between 2007 and 2019 in two major journals of mixed methods research to identify the integration challenges mixed methods researchers experienced. This study contributes to mixed methods by summarizing the reported challenges in empirical mixed methods articles based on the concept of integration. We found mixed methods users’ experienced uncertainty during integration due to lack of guidance and confidence. We advocate that researchers should be proactive in expounding methodological challenges that they confronted in practice and report what they did, how they did it, and why they did it in such ways to approach full integration. By doing this, researchers would make valuable contributions to this methodology’s development.