Mixed Methods

Although the variety of qualitative methods popularly used in conflict studies—narrative, ethnography, grounded theory, and case studies—are rooted in different method­ological orientations, they have demonstrated great flexibility, or “methodological eclecti­cism” (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2011), in data collection and analyses.

With the linguistic or discursive turn in the 1980s, more humanistic, interpretive, criti­cal, postmodern, contextualized, and culture­centered approaches took root impacting con­flict research as well as other areas of our field. As a new generation of scholars trained in quantitative and qualitative social scientific methods emerged, the old and often antago­nistic division between “quants and qualts” began to lose ground (Flyvbjerg, 2011, p. 313). In addition to quantitative and qualitative or qualitative (or quantitative) and rhetorical mixed methods, there also are genre-breaking ways to incorporate different qualitative and autoethnographic methodologies called crys­tallization (see Ellingson, 2009).

The interest in mixed methods has been prominent in communication research for a couple of decades, if not more, but only recently has there been a deep and abid­ing interest in mixed-methodological studies. Called the “third methodological movement,” following quantitative and qualitative devel­opment (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2011), mixed methods provides greater generalizability with rich findings that are attractive to investigators examining complex and global conflict issues as well as those on multidisciplinary teams and funded projects, and from different theo­retical orientations, with different questions, and for engaged scholarship (see Carbaugh & Buzzanell, 2010).

Mixed-methods researchers tend to argue that the quantitative and qualitative method­ological approaches are compatible and can be fruitfully used. For mixed-methods scholars, research is problem rather than methodology driven. Researchers of this pragmatic orienta­tion often choose a combination of methods that can best help answer the research ques­tion and solve a complex problem, such as when conflictual situations are shaped by multiple forces, factors, contingencies, and provisionalities. To understand complex phe­nomena, Teddlie and Tashakkori (2011) argue that qualitative methods such as narratives can be very effective in unraveling the “com­plexity of evolving contextual and behavioral patterns in those institutions much more thor­oughly than statistical summaries of numeric indicators” (p. 286).

Researchers use mixed methods for a vari­ety of purposes: to construct instruments, to corroborate findings, to address research par­ticipants’ experience, to reduce cultural and investigator bias, to increase generalizability, and to inform professional practice and/or public policy (Charmaz, 2011). Regardless of the specific purposes, a mixed-methods proj­ect expects the end product to be more than the sum of the individual parts achieved by quantitative or qualitative research methods alone. While some qualitative researchers are concerned that a mixed-methods research project could be dominated by a quantitatively oriented methodology where qualitative research is only nominally used to supplement quantitative research, it is nevertheless pos­sible to give the qualitative approach priority, if not of equal importance, in conflict research projects.

We review here a few studies that have combined both qualitative and quantitative methodologies in data collection and analysis, where qualitative methods are adopted as an integral, not just a supplementary part, to a given research project. Whereas a broader defi­nition of mixed methods may include the use of multiple qualitative methods or quantitative methods (Teddlie & Tashakkori, 2011), we have chosen to focus on projects employing both. It is also worth noting that before “mixed methods” becomes a widely accepted lingo, researchers have also used “multiple meth­ods,” “multimethod,” “mixed methodology,” and other similar expressions in articles and reports, which we review here in interpersonal, organizational, community, and social conflict.

In a study of interparental conflict and children, Sturge-Apple, Davies, Winter, Cummings, and Schermerhorn (2008) showed that children’s insecure internal representa­tions of interparental and parent-child rela­tionships could help explain interparental conflict, parental emotional unavailability, and the children’s emotional and classroom difficulties. They used a combination of meth­ods, both quantitative and qualitative, includ­ing lab observations, recorded interparental discussions, as well as child narratives of fam­ily relations to study the linkages between multiple factors. The narrative storytelling technique was adopted to allow children to depict mother-father, mother-child, and father-child relationships using various toy figures and props. This qualitative method enabled researchers to capture data in a more sensitive manner from children that form an integral part of the study that also used quan­titative questionnaires to collect data from parents and teachers at multiple time points within a 2-year period.

In organizational conflict research, Buzzanell and Burrell (1997) collected 620 metaphorical conflict expressions from 169 participants regarding their family and work­place conflict experience.

In their 2004 study, Roscigno and Hodson inquired whether organizational attributes and interpersonal relations in the workplace, in concert with union presence and collec­tive action history, may influence worker resistance. Adopting qualitative comparative analysis, the authors coded 82 book-length workplace organizational ethnographies in the United States and England, yielding rich information about industry, occupations, the presence of collective resistance (striking) and individual resistance (e.g., social sabotage and work avoidance), and macro/historical elements (e.g., union legacy). Through statisti­cal analysis, the study identified three broad workplace types based on forms of resis­tance: contentious, cohesive, and unorganized. While collective resistance was shown to vary depending on social relations on the shop floor, individual resistance was characterized by poor organization and a lack of collective action legacy.

In a more recent study utilizing mixed methods to study organizational conflict, Brinkert (2011) evaluated the comprehensive conflict coaching model for improving nurses’ conflict resolution skills in a hospital environ­ment. Research data were gathered through both interviews and questionnaires at different study intervals: pretraining, training, post­training (1 month, 3 months, and 6 months).

To study community conflict, Brummans and colleagues (2008) used mixed methods to make sense of intractable multiparty con­flict, particularly the role of framing through analyses of four environmental disputes in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Texas. Researchers collected 153 semistructured interviews, each 1 to 2 hours in length, with a wide range of disputants: 12 farmers, 29 business and industry people, 28 environ­mentalists, 10 citizen activists, 18 elected political officials, 46 government agency offi­cials, 5 media affiliates, and 5 mediators or other neutral third parties (p. 31). Using grounded theory (qualitative) and content analysis (quantitative) of interview transcripts and archival data (news articles, meetings and court records, memos, and technical reports), the study identified four disputant clusters (victimhood, dispassion, optimism and hope, and power and powerlessness). Different framing repertoires were shown to have fueled the intractability of each dispute. The authors concluded that a mixed-methods approach produces a more holistic picture of the four disputes: proceeding from qualita­tive interviews (first-level interpretation), to constant comparative method (second-level interpretation), to quantitative content analy­sis (third-level interpretation), and finally to cluster framing (fourth-level interpretation).

In the context of s ocial conflict, adopting a mixed-methods approach, Stewart, Pitts, and Osborne (2011) examined how a Virginia newspaper discursively constructs the “illegal immigrant” as a substitute for Latino immi­grants. The study used quantitative lexical analysis to trace the newspaper’s discourse about illegal immigrants from 1994 to 2006. It also used critical discourse analysis to show how two local news events and local immigration policies are influenced by such perceptions of Latinos. Lexical items are dem­onstrated to be low in optimism and common­ality, yet consistent with outgroup negativity. The qualitative part of the study shows how the two events involving “illegal immigrants” were linked to negative stereotypes.