Qualitative Research in Practice : Stories From the Field - Blogs Unpad

Qualitative research in practice
Qualitative and quantitative concurrently
Mixed qualitative and quantitative designs do not always have to be
interdependent to the extent described above. Sometimes quantitative
and qualitative components of a study are carried out
independently and the conduct of one does not depend on the
other. In this case it does not matter whether they are conducted
concurrently, sequentially or in any particular order. Different
methods may be used to address the same research question, as in
a classic triangulation, or relate to different aspects of the research.
The purposes of a mixed-method study of this type would generally
be triangulation, complementarity or expansion, or some combination
of these.
This approach was used by Krahn, Hohn and Kime (1995) in
their study of parental experiences of being informed about their
child’s disability. Interviews about the diagnostic experience were
conducted with parents and analysed thematically. Parents also
completed quantitative ratings about the professional who informed
them of the disability. In this case, different methods were used to
obtain different sets of data that together may shed light on how
parents experienced the diagnostic process. While parents consistently
rated the professionals highly, the interviews revealed
considerable dissatisfaction with how the professionals handled the
situation. After considering several alternative explanations through
statistical means, the researchers concluded that the open-ended
interviews both enabled greater nuances of experience to be
expressed and encompassed broader aspects of the informing
process than the ratings, thus revealing a greater depth and
complexity to the informing process than had previously been
reported in the literature.
Liz Kelly’s (1999) evaluation of a crisis intervention service to
follow-up police responses to domestic violence is another example
of this approach to mixed methods. Qualitative and quantitative
methods were used, for different components of the evaluation
brief, and at different stages of the research. As the research
progressed, there were various modifications in design, such as
rewording some survey questions to reflect current practice terminology,
and a follow-up questionnaire to social services agencies
was abandoned on the basis of poor response in favour of a smaller
number of more targeted telephone interviews. Even so, the
methods themselves were not interdependent, in that the findings
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