Abstract
I dedicate this paper to my friend and colleague, Mike Fetters, who served as senior co-editor of the Journal of Mixed Methods Research (JMMR). In this paper, I discuss key mixed methods developments over the last 35 years, my fortunate involvement in them, and my collaboration with Mike Fetters in several of them. The discussion focuses on founding leaders of the field, combining quantitative and qualitative research, co-founding JMMR and the Mixed Methods International Research Association, teaching and simplifying mixed methods research, promoting the methodology internationally, assisting external groups in establishing quality standards for the field, and co-founding with Mike Fetters the Michigan Mixed Methods Research Program. This discussion contributes a personal historical perspective about the mixed methods field.
Keywords
Introduction
Mike Fetters was my friend, colleague, international traveler, and professional supporter. He will be missed for his kind, gentle manner, overwhelming encouragement, and contributions as senior co-editor for the Journal of Mixed Method Research (JMMR). My collaboration with Mike started about twenty-five years ago when I served on a panel at a health conference to review submissions by “new” scholars. Mike presented his research, and it did not go well. Afterward, I asked him if I could help him with his study. Our collaboration was born. Today, to honor Mike’s work, I begin my conference presentations with a slide dedicated to Mike and his contributions.
Mike always encouraged me to present one slide on my personal experiences at conferences as the mixed method field developed. Over the years I have reflected on the developing field. I have called these reflections “mapping the field” or “mapping the developing landscape of mixed methods research.” Two examples of these reports would be my editorial as co-editor of JMMR in 2009 (Creswell, 2009) and a chapter in the second edition of the Tashakkori and Teddlie Sage Handbook (Creswell, 2010a). During these years, I also made several conference presentations “mapping the field” to augment these readings (e.g., Creswell, 2010b).
I realized that I have been part of the history-making of the field. The purpose of this paper is to discuss significant developments in the field of mixed methods research in the last 35 years in which I have been fortunate to be involved. I also highlight Mike Fetters’ collaboration with me in several of these developments. I present these events in chronological order: the founding of the field, combining quantitative and qualitative research, sketching the types of designs, summarizing the field in numerous Handbooks, establishing the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and the Mixed Methods International Research Association. I also discuss teaching and simplifying knowledge about mixed methods, expanding the international reach of this methodology, setting standards for a high-quality study, and promoting training through the establishment with Mike the Michigan Mixed Methods Research Program. I apologize for overlooking significant milestones, and I honor the work of talented scholars who worked alongside me through the years.
Original Founders of Mixed Methods Research
When did mixed methods research, as we know it today, begin? I track this back to 1985–1995. Individuals before this time had collected both quantitative and qualitative data in studies, and they sometimes informally connected the two databases. However, the advent of viewing mixed methods as a distinct, systematic methodology for me goes back to the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. About eight people from different disciplines and countries became involved in mixed methods during this period. At the forefront would be the late Alan Bryman from the Department of Social Sciences at Loughborough University in England, who wrote, I believe, the first book on quantitative and qualitative research (Bryman, 1988). Then, Jennifer Greene and colleagues from the field of evaluation at the University of Illinois wrote an excellent journal article on the purpose and designs of mixed methods research (Greene et al., 1989). Others writing at roughly the same time were the US sociologists Brewer and Hunter (1989), and the UK sociologists, the Fieldings (Fielding & Fielding, 1986). From nursing in Canada, Morse began discussing mixed methods designs (Morse, 1991), and Miller and Crabtree in primary care medicine also began advancing the “mixing” of quantitative and qualitative data (Miller & Crabtree, 1992). There may be others I have missed, but these names have surfaced in my presentations about the “founders.” I, too, authored about the “combined” use of quantitative and qualitative data in the late 1980s as I authored my Research Design book (Creswell, 1994).
Why did mixed methods emerge at this time? Over the years, several authors have speculated about the reasons (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2009). For example, bringing quantitative and qualitative research together addressed offsetting strengths and weaknesses of the two methods. Qualitative research was coming into its own as a legitimate, distinct mode of research, and keeping quantitative and qualitative research separate as approaches did not make sense. Using multiple methods to study a research problem had gained favor for several years with the multi-method, multi-trait thinking of the psychologists Campbell and Fiske (Campbell & Fiske, 1959).
For me, these lofty reasons did not propel me into the field. In the late 1980s, I was teaching a doctoral course on dissertation proposal development. Some students attended the class to conduct a quantitative study; others wanted to pursue qualitative research. As I went back and forth between the two approaches, the combination of both approaches together would yield the most evidence for a study and present a more complete understanding of a research problem. I began considering combining quantitative and qualitative research in a single study.
Combining Quantitative and Qualitative Research
My thinking about combining qualitative and quantitative research coalesced when I wrote a chapter called “Combining Qualitative and Quantitative Research” in my first research methods book, Research Design: Qualitative and Quantitative Approaches (Creswell, 1994). Following the publication of this book, I received more comments about my “combining” chapter than about any other feature of the book. This book launched my research methods writing career and fixed in my mind the potential for mixed methods research.
I doubt others were as excited about this “new” methodology as I was. I remember attending a session at the 1992 American Educational Research Association annual meeting in San Francisco. The program announced a paper by a doctoral student on mixed methods. I arrived at the session and only two people were present: the doctoral student and myself. I was so excited about this new approach to research, and the doctoral student seemed to think I was a deranged professor. But my excitement, I remember, was like my feelings about buying my first microcomputer back in the 1970s. Something big was about to happen.
I continued to write about mixed methods research, and specifically types of research designs, when I co-authored in 2003 with Vicki Plano Clark and Michelle Guttmann a chapter on “advanced mixed methods research designs” for the Handbook in Mixed Methods in Social & Behavioral Research (Creswell, et al., 2003). This Handbook, with its 42 authors, 26 chapters, and 768-page length, brought the field of mixed methods together for the first time (Tashakkori & Teddlie, 2003). My chapter with Plano Clark and Guttmann set the stage for my future work advancing procedures for a “typology” approach to research designs. In 2003, we advanced four designs: triangulation, explanatory, exploratory, and embedded designs. Since 2003, the names of designs, procedures, purposes, diagrams, types (e.g., basic and complex or hybrid), and interactive design approaches have changed. Plano Clark and I commented on these changes in our 20-year retrospective on designs, recently published in the 2023 Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods Research Designs, edited by Cheryl Poth (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2023).
Five Mixed Method Handbooks Spanning 2003 to 2023.
Adapted from: Creswell, J. W., Poth, C. N., & Rawlins, P. (2023). Mapping design trends and evolving directions since 2016 using the Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods Research Design, pp. 527–537. In C. Poth (Ed.), SAGE handbook of mixed methods designs. Sage.
Negotiating the Journal of Mixed Methods Research
Books and Handbooks helped to define the emerging methodology of mixed methods research. Shortly after writing the 2003 chapter for the Tashakkori and Teddlie Handbook, I teamed with Abbas Tashakkori to suggest to Sage Publishing the launch of a journal solely devoted to mixed methods. We visited the Sage headquarters in California, sat down with the new President, Blaise Simque, and suggested that the field had grown to a point where it needed its own journal. I am sure that I pointed to the success of the 2003 Handbook. Blaise listened to our pitch and then asked one question, “why do we need mixed methods research?” My rambling answer needed to be more satisfactory. Today, I can answer the question better: “It is valuable to gather quantitative and qualitative data when studying a problem. However, added insight occurs by bringing the databases together, which is the integration of the data. This integration provides additional information beyond what can learn from the quantitative and qualitative data.”
I don’t know whether my comment won the day at the Sage office, but apparently, we were convincing. In 2007, the Journal of Mixed Methods Research (JMMR) launched with Tashakkori and myself as the founding co-editors. We assembled an interdisciplinary and international editorial board. We focused on empirical articles (using mixed methods to study discipline-based problems), methodological articles (to advance thinking about the field), and media reviews. I remember thinking at the time that I had no idea what a quality mixed methods study would be. Within two years, the journal received a good impact score for a short time frame for a score among all the Sage journals.
Mike Fetters served as the co-editor of JMMR between 2015 and 2022. Over the years, JMMR expanded to include many features added during his editorship-prevalence studies, research notes, commentaries, and special and virtual special issues. Mike’s editorials were creative and innovative. Mike had a profound impact on elevating the status of the journal. It now has a high impact factor of 3.9—a high score placing the journal in the top 10% for interdisciplinary social science journals.
Forming an International Association and Global Expansion
The international composition of the JMMR editorial board and the articles we received in the early years of JMMR contributed to my interest in establishing an international association to build a worldwide community of researchers. In England, individuals had established an international conference on mixed methods, starting in the health sciences (and nursing) and expanding to the University of Cambridge. By May 2012, a British conference on mixed methods was held at the School of Health Care at Leeds University in England. About six of us (I believe) had petitioned the conference leaders to have a session on the idea of forming an international association. The conference leaders denied our request but allowed us to meet in a building adjacent to the conference venue (in a small board room on the third floor with dim lighting, I recall). Over the years, I have called this the “secret” meeting. The meeting had important outcomes.
By 2013, our group established the Mixed Methods International Research Association (MMIRA), and I became its founding President, with Burke Johnson serving as the Executive Director. This founding established an interdisciplinary, international community of mixed methods scholars and led to a global conference to bring researchers together. In an affiliated way, JMMR became the Association’s journal. Soon after our formation, countries worldwide began forming chapters or affiliate groups with MMIRA. These chapters or affiliate groups began to hold regional conferences during the off year of the international conference. Going to the MMIRA website today I see eight groups listed: the Oceania Chapter, the Caribbean Chapter, the European Chapter, the Latin America Chapter, the China Chapter, the Student Chapter (organized from Ireland), the Japan Society for Mixed Methods Research affiliate and the Canadian Methodes Mixtes Francophonie affiliate. More new chapters from Turkey, the Philippines, Qatar, and Italy may come along soon. Mixed methods research had expanded around the world.
More recently, I felt we needed open discussions about this global expansion. In August 2022, I organized a panel discussion at the online global MMIRA conference of leading mixed methods researchers from Japan, South America, Jamaica, and the US (Michigan) to address the expansion of the methodology in their countries. In 2023, at Peking University, representatives from the Philippines, Japan, Korea, China, and Thailand all shared their countries’ mixed methods use.
In addition, researchers have applied mixed methods research to address key world and country issues, such as nuclear accidents in Sweden (Rasmussen, et al., 2022), immigrant health services in the US (Wichelt et al., 2022), workplace bullying in Korea (Park & Choi, 2023) and the “Hikikimori” problem in Japan—the social withdrawal of adults with Autistic Spectrum Disorder (Hirose & Creswell, 2022). These problems are complex (Mertens, 2015), and mixed methods research offers multiple forms of evidence consisting of broad trends and personal perspectives, views from vulnerable populations, researchers “mining” data further through integration, and a common language for diverse constituent groups (Gomez, 2014).
I spoke at the international conference in Tokyo, Japan in 2015 at the Aoyama Gakuin University conference with about 250 attendees. I presented how mixed methods research has expanded from the social sciences to the health sciences. Mike Fetters spoke directly after my presentation. During his speech, he walked to the left of the stage, down the steps to a large whiteboard positioned at the front of the auditorium. He then wrote an equation for mixed methods research on the whiteboard: 1 + 1 = 3. He said combining quantitative and qualitative data was not only the total of the two databases, but it also led to additional insight (the 3) beyond the two data sets. Later, he would describe this equation in JMMR editorials, discussing how integration is greater than the sum of the individual qualitative and quantitative parts (Fetters & Freshwater, 2015) and in the use of equations to describe mixed methods research (Fetters, 2018). Fetters’ equation has now been inscribed on the coffee mugs we hand out at workshops for the Michigan Mixed Methods Research Program. The equation has generally stood the test of time since 2015, although others have suggested, for example, that 1 + 1 = 1 signifies the addition of two databases (Onwuebuzie, 2023).
In 2013–14, when I served as President of MMIRA, the Executive Committee appointed a small task force to develop a future 5-year plan for the field of mixed methods research. I received some push-back from Executive Committee members, but I finally convinced them of this need. A 7-member task force was appointed with Donna Mertens as the chair. Their report, ultimately published in JMMR in 2016, focused on five themes central to the future of mixed methods (Mertens et al., 2016): advancement in philosophy and methodology, innovative designs, technological advancements and big data, preparation of mixed methods researchers, and responsiveness to complex societal problems. Ten years later in 2023, when I co-authored a chapter on the future of mixed methods research for the Sage Handbook of Mixed Methods Research Designs (Creswell et al., 2023), Cheryl Poth, Peter Rawlins, and I returned to the MMIRA task force report and mapped the 2023 Handbook chapters against the five themes of the 2016 report. As we reported, the 2016 task force “got it right,” We found a close alignment between the task force themes and the chapters presented in the 2023 Handbook. New themes did emerge in the 2023 Handbook, but the future the Mertens’ task force had predicted had come to pass.
Simplifying the Teaching of Mixed Methods Research
Unquestionably the field of mixed methods had expanded and developed by the time of the 2014 task force report. I saw this expansion and felt that new scholars and international researchers might become lost in the voluminous emerging literature. In 2013 I was invited to be a Visiting Professor in the School of Public Health and the School of Medicine at Harvard. One responsibility consisted of teaching a class on mixed methods research to doctoral students and faculty. I used Creswell and Plano Clark Designing and Conducting Mixed Methods Research (2nd ed. 2010) as the primary text for the class. The faculty (some senior and distinguished) and students were new to mixed methods research. I organized my classroom notes to focus on what I considered to be the “fundaments” of conducting the methodology. During the class, several participants commented how they found the Creswell and Plano Clark book of 275 pages too time-consuming to read and digest.
After the class, I decided to simplify the presentation of mixed methods research for new scholars, and I took my class notes and began writing a new book. In 2014, Sage published my Concise Introduction to Mixed Methods Research (Creswell, 2014). I based my chapters on the topics of each session in my Harvard class lectures, created a short book that could be read in 2–3 hours (by an English-speaking person), and asked Sage to keep the cost low. Happily, this book has now been translated into many languages (as of November 2022: Turkish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Taiwanese, and Indonesian) (M. Knight, personal communication from Sage Publishing, October 11, 2023).
Writing the Concise book made me think about simplifying the presentation of mixed methods in my writing, in my keynote addresses, and in conversations with scholars, especially individuals with English as a second language. With great interest, I read the implementation science article by Curran (2020), where he advanced “Implementation Science Made Too Simple: A Teaching Tool.” A brilliant article, I said to myself. After studying implementation science for several years, I found the Curran model to clarify my confusion about the approach. Similarly, I could create a simple model for mixed methods research.
Further, in the field of mixed methods, I noted the continued development of procedures in the literature. I found these helpful additions, but they were isolated developments that writers did not connect to provide a step-by-step process for conducting a study. For example, I saw the disconnection among definitions of mixed methods (Johnson et al., 2007), integration (Fetters, et al., 2013), joint displays (Guetterman, et al., 2015), and metainferences (Fetters, 2020). Consequently, I began working on a “simple 6-step model” for mixed methods research that would focus on the essential components in conducting a study, tie together recent procedural developments (such as integration and metainferences), and form a process of steps in logical order that a new or international scholar might follow.
As shown in Figure 1, this process model involves stating a problem best addressed by quantitative and qualitative data, collecting both sets of data, selecting a mixed methods design, examining the design procedures for the point of integration of the two databases, designing a template and displaying the results of the data (a joint display), and then drawing insight or metainferences from examining the integrated findings. In this way, I see integration (looking at the design for points where the two datasets connect) and the design of a joint display (developing a template and then filling it in with data) as separate steps in the process. Theory, philosophy, ethics, and validity considerations often encase the 6 steps. I have presented this model in many international presentations over the last few years (e.g., Creswell, 2023) and suggested that most mixed methods literature stems from these model components. A simple 6-step model for mixed method research.
The Quality Criteria Discussions
Some groups outside the mixed methods academic community have become involved in discussing mixed methods research and its quality criteria. For example, in the United States in 2011, I participated as co-chair of a small group (including Mike Fetters) commissioned by the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop the “best practices” for doing mixed methods research (National Institute of Health, 2011). This report sought to provide applicants and reviewers with recommended criteria for NIH projects. For example, the report contains a checklist that scholars might use to review their applications for rigorous mixed methods research. After writing our report, we put it up on a website, and within two weeks, it had 20,000 hits. The report has been the most heavily hit website for the Office of Behavioral and Social Science Research (National Institute of Health, 2018). We have seen an increase in projects with mixed methods funded by various institutes at NIH (Coyle, et al., 2016) and have some sense of reviewers’ comments (Guetterman, et al., 2019).
In 2018, the American Psychological Association organized a small group to develop “standards” of mixed methods research. I participated on this team as a mixed methods specialist, and we developed tables or “standards” for qualitative and mixed methods research. The suggestions (for APA journal authors) spanned from writing a title to drawing implications from a study. After writing our report, we published a journal article in the American Psychologist reporting our “standards” (Leavitt, et al., 2018). Fortunately, the American Psychological Association’s new seventh edition of the Publication Manual reproduced our “standards” and tables (American Psychologist Association, 2019). This inclusion marked an important historical development for mixed methods: it was the first time qualitative and mixed methods research had entered the Manual. Also, since the Publication Manual guided the style for writing publications around the world and in many disciplines, the mixed methods “standards” have helped the methodology enter the mainstream of research.
The NIH “best practices” and the APA “standards” illustrate interest in quality standards by groups outside the mixed methods community. These reports align with numerous articles addressing the quality of mixed methods research over the years. As shown in Figure 2, discussions began in 2008 by O’Cathain and colleagues (O’Cathain et al., 2008) and have involved journal editors writing about criteria for their journals (Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2019; Onwuegbuzie & Poth, 2016) and the breadth of international organizations guiding mixed methods studies (Fetters & Molina-Azorin, 2021). In Figure 2, I present these studies in chronological order. Recently, I co-authored an article discussing the importance of quality criteria emerging from within and outside the academy (Hirose & Creswell, 2022). Also, for international and beginning mixed methods scholars we advanced a 6-item list of criteria adding to a short list recommended by Bryman (2014) almost a decade ago. Studies on quality criteria in mixed methods research.
Forming a Mixed Methods Research Program
In 2015, I was supported by Mike Fetters to join the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Michigan, and with Mike co-founded the Michigan Mixed Methods Research Program. Mike Fetters innovated in many aspects of the Program, from crafting the design of workshops, hosting and mentoring international scholars, developing creative workshop activities, and positioning the Program solidly in the Michigan academic environment. As a talented bilingual scholar, he developed close ties to Japan and helped Japanese scholars publish their international journal articles.
The Program held its inaugural mixed methods workshop in Ann Arbor on March 31–April 2, 2016. Now, the Program has entered its ninth year. As many as six different Michigan resident and online workshops are offered each year, and we provide off-site workshops at places like Stanford, Qatar, and Osaka, Japan. These workshops provide hands-on experiences for participants to bring projects to our workshop, to design or redesign them, and to share and receive feedback from other participants and the facilitators. With funds from the McCune Foundation, the program provides workshop scholarships for students and faculty from developing countries. Participants have come from Nigeria, Colombia, Jamaica, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Trinidad and Tobago, South Africa, Turkey, Puerto Rico, and Uganda.
An interesting by-product of our program work has been our leadership team’s innovations in mixed methods (augmented by talented international visiting scholars in our program) over the last eight years. I call this our Michigan “think tank” in which Program faculty have innovated in mixed methods, such as developing joint displays (Guetterman, et al., 2015), participatory action research and mixed methods (DeJonckheere, et al., 2019), integration and metainference strategies (Fetters, 2020), and complex or hybrid mixed methods designs (Creswell & Plano Clark, 2018).
Mapping Again the Field of Mixed Methods Research
With this paper review, I am mapping again the field of mixed methods research. The role and significance of Mike Fetters looms large in my review. As I mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Mike had encouraged me to always include in my presentations a timeline of significant events I have chronicled in this paper. As shown in Figure 3, this timeline stretches from 1980 to 2023 with events marked that I have already discussed. A brief historical sketch of the evolution of mixed methods over 35 years.
Below the timeline are boxes indicating categories in this development. This picture provides an overview of how a methodology can develop over time. Individuals write books, a journal appears, funding supports the methodology, an international association forms, training programs begin, authors comment about quality criteria, and writers assemble a compendium of topics in Handbooks. In presenting this slide, I mention in my presentations that I have been fortunate to see this methodology grow.
In Conclusion
What has surprised me during these 35 years? I have been pleasantly surprised about the phenomenal interest and growth in mixed methods research. After my initial excitement at the 1992 AERA conference, I began to wonder if we had a legitimate methodology and how a study might be conducted. Mixed methods research has expanded around the globe. I have realized that, unlike other methodologies to have developed (e.g., meta-analysis becoming firmly established in the social sciences and statistics by 1994, Hedges, 2015), mixed methods, fortunately, grew up in the technology age, with its attendant webinars, web-based communities, and now AI. At first, there were some concerns about mixed methods research. How can we combine different philosophies? But then the rigid philosophical stances began to soften, and we now know many philosophical assumptions may provide a foundation for mixed methods research.
I have been mentoring many people in mixed methods research over the years. New scholars, especially, and I have enjoyed how the Journal of Mixed Methods Research and Mike Fetters emphasized the importance of doctoral students writing for the journal. I am sad about some of the loss of the giants in the field, such as Alan Bryman of the UK, Pierre Pluye of Canada, and now Mike Fetters of Michigan. New scholars publish in JMMR and in recent Handbooks (Poth, 2023). I am delighted with international support, and the high-quality regional MMIRA conferences to emerge worldwide. I am eager to learn more about how these regional conferences and countries incorporate local customs, traditions, and indigenous thinking into their mixed methods studies. I am optimistic about MMIRA continuing to grow and impact after its ten years. I have been surprised that I stayed focused on this methodology for 35 years. Most of the “founders” I mentioned have now re-focused their attention away from this methodology or moved into new fields of inquiry. What has kept my interest alive is the constant shift I have experienced from year to year on topics within mixed methods. Although designs have been a staple for me, I continue to map the field, write about integration, and expand beyond the social sciences to the health sciences and other topics. Each year I choose a new topic in the field to work on. This 35-year retrospective, the simple 6-step model, and expansion of mixed methods globally, especially to East Asia, and developing culturally sensitive mixed method studies illustrate recent topics. I am thankful that people have liked my books.
At the time of his passing, Mike had begun his book-writing career (Fetters, 2020) and had just completed his Japanese book on the “Treasure Hunt” (Fetters & Kakai, 2021). He was expanding his book writing as his career developed. Who knows what new books, what innovations in journal writing, what international programs he might have developed had he a few more years of life?
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
