Thinking qualitatively in the context of mixed methods research: implications for study design

In this chapter, we propose research implications of privileging qualitative methods in mixed methods research designs, extending the work by Hesse-Biber (2010a,b), Mertens (2017, 2021), and O'Dwyer and Bernauer (2014), Onwuegbuzie and Leech (2021). We discuss design implications for educational studies from a theoretical, conceptual, and methodological perspective. For these discussions, we draw on three research projects namely Scherman and Liebenberg (2021), Smit (2021) and Scherman et al. (2018), that were intended for designing mixed methods studies, where we quantified qualitative data, qualitized quantitative data and explored software intended chiefly for qualitative data analysis, for mixed methods research.