Category Archives: Mixed Method Research

Timelining as a Strategy to Integrate Qualitative and Quantitative Data – A MMR Brief

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Nothing is more central to mixed methods research than strategies that allow for the alignment of data from different sources during analysis. Visualizations of different kinds, from timelining, to mapping, or different forms of matrices are instrumental to the process.

Any educational program or activity designed to promote a measure of mental health or physical well-being has a time element that often varies between points in time where there is forward progress and others where there is little or no progress or even, possibly, regression. Whether it is about improving a skill in math or recovery from some type of traumatic event, timelines can be instrumental in research about an intentionally designed activity. Timelining is often thought of as an example of graphic elicitation that is part of the arsenal of strategies associated with qualitative research.  These can be collected at one point of time or at multiple points of time to help participants reflect on patterns in a trajectory or speculate about what was occurring at the time that might influence. In a mixed methods context, a researcher can use timelines for purposes of analysis by overlaying quantitative indicators or to cluster groups with similar patterns to detect differences and similarities.

 This post provides a link to a brief, 2-page summary posted to Academia, of some uses of timelining in mixed methods research. This entry extracts two examples of timelining reviewed in a chapter from the book, Visual Displays in Qualitative and Mixed Methods Research (Creamer, 2024). One derives from research in an educational context and the second is about individual progress in a drug rehabilitation program. Each illustrates how a visualization or graphic can be at the core of meaningful integration of qualitative and quantitative data during analysis in mixed methods research. Each demonstrates how a visualization or graphics can promote the ability the experiment with different ways to align data to detect patterns and relationships. Additional resources and examples are listed at the end of the entry. 

Data Collection Strategies

Approaches to collecting data that link a quantitative measure(s) and participant observations include:

  • Participants maintain or submit online on a regular basis.
  • A participant and researcher meet and construct through conversation, sometimes at regular intervals.
  • A researcher constructs, plotting both qualitative and quantitative data on a timeline.

A You Tube video of mine illustrates a simple way to spot changes of time by plotting qualitative data in a simple matrix (https://youtu.be/ngY7lmPxRxo). 

MMR Approaches to Timelining

Teaching Mixed Methods Research 

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Engaging Criticism from Outside the Community

I am among those who were slightly scandalized when I first heard about the all too visible rift that opened up between the well-known duo that first put voice to the idea of grounded theory, Glaser and Strauss. After their initial collaboration, the duo split on different epistemological approaches to grounded theory. The differences are profound in that they take different stances about, for example, the role of the literature, the balance between abduction and induction, and the role of verification. Exposing students to different points of view such as these about a method helps students to develop critical thinking skills. It helps them develop agency about the methods they chose and how they chose to implement them. It helps prepare them for the real-world where there are audience members, journal reviewers, and colleagues who dismiss MMR.

The same type of verbal scuffle emerged last year n the Journal of Mixed Methods, when several authors from within the community of self-identified researchers responded with some heat, accusing David Morgan (link to that editorial).of misrepresenting their views.

So Where’s the QUAL?

I felt similarly scandalized by reading a strongly worded 2021 editorial by Julianne Cheek in Qualitative Health Research Journal that certainly grabbed and held my attention. The whole thing felt like it had been written in all capital letters. This is a one of a long line of editorials in this Journal expressing outrage with an influx of submissions claiming to be mixed methods. As an editor of a journal myself, Methods in Psychology, I appreciate the frustration of receiving yet another manuscript adapting the MMR label with a qualitative component so trivial it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. 

There are numerous articles and chapters about controversies in mixed methods research written by members from within the self-avowed MMR community. These are often dry, long-winded, nearly surgical accounts written with an emic perspective that hardly grab the same attention as a hot worded editorial. 

Students are better prepared for the resistance they are likely to encounter when they venture outside of the safety of journals and conferences dedicated to mixed methods if they have had the opportunity to consider articles and editorials that are pointed in their criticism of mixed methods research that have been written by those standing outside of the field. Two examples of this kind of provocative commentary are: