Mixed Methods Research in Applied Linguistics: The Status quo of the Current Issues and Practices

The quality of mixing methods has been widely debated in the field of applied linguistics (AL) and the integration of data from both quantitative and qualitative research paradigms has always been open to controversy. The present study was aimed at recognizing the status quo of MMR in AL, investigating the nature of various sections of MMR studies, and specifying the way the pattern of employing MMR has changed over the past few years.  From a total of ۱,۳۱۴ articles in seven peer-reviewed accredited AL journals, ۲۲۰ articles were finally identified to be mixed in method which were subsequently scrutinized based on already-established frameworks regarding their research questions, research designs, sampling designs, and inference quality to explore the status quo of mixed methods research (MMR) in AL. We went through two phases of screening to identify the articles which met the principles of MMR and analyzed the selected articles qualitatively based on a coding scheme. The findings revealed (a) only a few research questions were hybrid, (b) both concurrent research designs and concurrent sampling designs were employed more frequently than their sequential counterparts, and (c) only a few articles made their inferences mixed in a principled manner. The findings of several extracts and an open-ended questionnaire showed a growing interest in MMR and the challenges and problems of conducting MMR, respectively. The results might imply that the new paradigms of research favor mixing methods and that the researchers employ it more due to its strengths.

Keywords:

mixed methods research , inference quality , research question , research design , sampling design