International Journal of Social Research Methodology

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Mixing Methods: The Entry of Qualitative and

Quantitative Approaches into the Research
Process

Julia Brannen

To cite this article: Julia Brannen (2005) Mixing Methods: The Entry of Qualitative and
Quantitative Approaches into the Research Process, International Journal of Social Research
Methodology, 8:3, 173-184, DOI: 10.1080/13645570500154642

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Int. J. Social Research Methodology
Vol. 8, No. 3, July 2005, pp. 173–184

Mixing Methods: The Entry of

Qualitative and Quantitative
Approaches into the Research Process
Julia Brannen

Qualitative and quantitative research are often presented as two fundamentally different
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paradigms through which we study the social world. These paradigms act as lightning
conductors to which sets of epistemological assumptions, theoretical approaches and
methods are attracted. Each is seen to be incompatible with the other. These paradig-
matic claims have a tendency to resurface from time to time, manifesting themselves in
the effects of different cultural traditions upon intellectual styles of research. There are
pressures to view research in terms of this divide but perhaps more pressures to ignore
such a divide.

In this paper I examine how qualitative and quantitative approaches are in practice
woven into the research process. In doing so I discuss the phasing of the research proc-
ess and the different considerations which apply in different phases. A distinction is
made between the context of enquiry or research design phase and the context of justi-
fication where data are analysed and interpreted. Part of the research process that is also
considered here and is often ignored in the literature concerns contextualization, an
important phase particularly in cross-national research.

The Case for Separation and the Case for Convergence

The case for separate paradigms is that qualitative and quantitative researchers hold
different epistemological assumptions, belong to different research cultures and have
different researcher biographies that work against convergence (Brannen, 1992).
Indeed qualitative researchers are embracing even greater reflexivity, for example

Julia Brannen is Professor of the Sociology of the Family, Institute of Education, University of London, based
within the Institute’s Thomas Coram Research Unit. Her research focuses on family sociology including children
and young people in families and has a special interest in the interface between work and family life and in
methodology. Correspondence to: J. Brannen, Thomas Coram Research Unit, Institute of Education, University
of London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK. Email: [email protected]

ISSN 1364–5579 (print)/ISSN 1464–5300 (online) © 2005 Taylor & Francis Group Ltd
DOI: 10.1080/13645570500154642
174 J. Brannen
taking account of the influence of the researcher in the research encounter, finding new
ways of relating the voices of marginal groups to academic knowledge and researcher
interpretation (see for example articles in this journal and Ribbens & Edwards, 1998).
On the quantitative front researchers are constantly urged by bodies such as the UK’s
Economic and Social Research Council to develop their skills base in order to keep up
with developments elsewhere (notably the US); this may serve to maintain the barri-
cades between qualitative and quantitative research through ever greater sophistication
and complexity of statistical techniques.
While researchers rationalize their interpretive frameworks in terms of fundamental
distinctions of ontology, epistemology and theory, they develop over time habits and
dispositions as well as particular expertise and preferences for particular approaches
and may lack the time and inclination to extend skills and interests in other directions
and across the qualitative/quantitative divide. Research practice is also shaped by the
research environment—by the funds available for a research project and by the short-
term contracts of many researchers in the UK.
While research practices diverge, there is considerable pressure for convergence at
this present time. Externally, there is increased demand for research to inform policy
and for practical rather than scientific research, again a trend that may work against
specialization in either qualitative or quantitative research (see Hammersley, 2000).
The importance placed upon particular types of research evidence is subject to
changes in political climates and persuasions. As Janet Finch argued in the 1980s,
British government has long preferred quantitative evidence in contrast to more
pluralistic methodological preferences of US governments in the same period (Finch,
1986). Currently, there are external pressures, from national and EU funders, for
researchers to inform policy and therefore to disseminate in lay language. There is a
whole industry in Britain and the US, and increasingly Europe, devoted to evaluation
of policy that utilizes qualitative as well as quantitative methods (Ritchie & Lewis,
2003). In the US, the demand for qualitative research has been caught up in the wider
politics of interest groups who have argued that the benefits of government
programmes to the poor did not show up in much quantitative work (Ong, 1999).
Many of these trends suggest greater rather than less convergence between
approaches.
Both externally and internally, the pressures of research markets and the marketiza-
tion of universities in the 1990s and twenty-first century are leading to the institution-
alization of research training. The arrival of a skills-based economy in which training
has superseded notions of apprenticeship is as influential in research as elsewhere in the
labour market. In Britain, in the past ten to fifteen years, we have seen a steady expan-
sion in masters’ degrees courses in research methods and in other courses dedicated to
research training. Today’s students on masters courses are typically introduced to both
qualitative and quantitative methods, whereas in the past they were not exposed to
such a wide range of methods.
Pressure from users and the enhanced diversity of skills influence the type of
research that is done as well as the questions posed, and how they are addressed. They
also affect how research is written up for different audiences or ‘user’ groups.
 International Journal of Social Research Methodology 175
Researchers today are required to communicate in ‘double speak’: in the specialized
languages that define their ‘fields’ (as opposed to disciplines) (Bernstein, 2000) and in
a generic, popular language that addresses ‘research users’. Such emphasis upon
dissemination may have the effect of increasing the importance of research which takes
an action perspective, that is draws upon actors’ perspectives both in the interpretation
and in the presentation of the data. This is not to suggest, however, that quantitative
research is being displaced.
However, responding to pressures from funders and the demand to disseminate and
to do so in particular kinds of ways can result in epistemological issues vanishing from
view in the way data analysis is discussed, while methodological issues may be reduced
to skills training. Lack of space in the article format also can mean that methodological
issues are relegated to footnotes, while in books they appear in appendices or end notes.
These pressures have on the other hand helped to generate an increase in journals and
books devoted to methodological issues.
Yet while I have made a case for greater pressure to work qualitatively and quantita-
tively, it is also possible to argue that the continuing existence of the separate paradigms
approach is a healthy sign that such matters are still a subject for debate. Having
reviewed many journal articles on methodology in recent years, I would suggest that
there is strong support for working both qualitatively and quantitatively. In the current
trend towards evidence-based practice and the systematic review of social science
research, research that combines qualitative and quantitative methods needs particular
attention. The task for reviewers is a hard one if the published methodological evidence
for either approach is wanting.

Working Qualitatively and Quantitatively

I do not propose in this paper to demonstrate how the distinctions that are typically
said to distinguish between qualitative and quantitative research break down under
scrutiny (see, for example, Bryman 1988, 2001; and Hammersley, 1992, for a discus-
sion of this). I will simply assert that there are more overlaps than differences
between these claims (Hammersley, 1992). For example, the claims that qualitative
research uses words while quantitative research uses numbers is overly simplistic. A
further claim that qualitative studies focus on meanings while quantitative research is
concerned with behaviour is also not fully supported since both may be concerned
with people’s views and actions. The association of qualitative research with an
inductive logic of enquiry and quantitative research with hypothetic-deduction can
often be reversed in practice; both types of research may employ both forms of logic.
That qualitative research lacks quantitative research’s power to generalize is moreo-
ver only true if generalizability is taken to refer only to statistical inference, that is
when the findings of a research sample are generalized to the parent population.
Qualitative findings may be generalized in a different sense; they may be generalized
to other settings or contexts or they may involve theoretical generalization, where
findings are extrapolated in relation to their theoretical application (Ritchie & Lewis,
2003).
176 J. Brannen
The Context of Enquiry
I want to focus upon the two contexts in the research process in which methodological
considerations come to the fore. First, the context of enquiry or the research design
phase. At this phase of the research process we wrestle with such fundamental method-
ological questions as: ‘How important is it to be able to estimate the frequency of a
defined social phenomenon according to other defined variables?’ ‘How important is
it to generalize those frequencies and their associations to a parent population?’ ‘Do we
want to test a hypothesis and/or generate new hypotheses?’ ‘Do we want to explore
what people think about a particular social phenomenon and how those perceptions
link to other perspectives and informant characteristics?’ Or, more mundanely, in
terms of sampling, ‘Do we want to use one field method to find a particular group and
to use a different field method to study a subset of that group?’ We are likely in many
research projects to ask a number of questions each of which may have different meth-
odological implications. The kinds of questions we pose lead therefore not only to the
choice of method but, increasingly commonly, to a complex of methods.

Context of Justification
Our methods and their assumptions are revisited in a second context—what is known
as the context of justification where the data are analysed and interpreted. As some
would argue, in the context of justification the resulting data sets cannot be linked
together unproblematically (Smith & Heshusius, 1986). For it is at this phase that onto-
logical, epistemological and theoretical issues raise their heads in the encounter with
data. In the cold light of data analysis we are forced to reflect on different kinds of
‘truth’ or ‘validity’ and to take account of the fact that our different types of data are
constituted by the assumptions and methods that elicit them.
Thus we cannot unproblematically assume that data from different methods will
corroborate one another as is implied in the strategy of triangulation—that is where the
choice of methods is intended to investigate a single social phenomenon from different
vantage points (Denzin, 1970). Data collected from different methods cannot be
simply added together to produce a unitary or rounded reality. When we combine
methods, there are a number of possible outcomes; corroboration of results is only one
of at least four possibilities (Morgan, 1998, cited in Bryman, 2001; Hammersley, 1996):
● Corroboration: The ‘same results’ are derived from both qualitative and quantitative
methods.
● Elaboration: The qualitative data analysis exemplifies how the quantitative findings
apply in particular cases.
● Complementarity: The qualitative and quantitative results differ but together they
generate insights.
● Contradiction: Where qualitative data and quantitative findings conflict.
What I want to suggest is that working qualitatively and quantitatively involves
considerations at each phase of research enquiry. In other words, when researchers
 International Journal of Social Research Methodology 177
work with different types of data within the same research project, the way they use
these data will vary according to the phase of the research in which the researcher brings
the different data sets into play. Bryman distinguishes between the ways in which qual-
itative and quantitative research are combined in terms of: (a) the importance given to
qualitative and quantitative approaches in the research investigation and (b) the time
ordering or sequencing of the approaches. However, as he suggests, such distinctions
are not always possible in practice because they rely on being able to identify the domi-
nance of one approach (Bryman, 2001, p. 448).
In the rest of the paper I give some examples of the ways qualitative and quantitative
approaches enter the research process with particular attention to the context of
enquiry and the context of justification, drawing upon studies from my own research
biography.

Working Qualitatively and Quantitatively in Practice

The Research Design Phase
The example I give here is where two data sets are clearly specified in the research
design—as distinct and separate parts of a study. The study concerned children’s
concepts of care and their contribution to family life (Brannen, Heptinstall, & Bhopal,
2000), which was carried out in two London boroughs (Table 1). The first phase was a
self-completion questionnaire survey of school-based populations—of around 1,000
children aged 11–12. The second phase involved a sub-sample drawn from the survey
of groups of children and their parents living in different types of household (63 house-
holds). This second phase employed a semi-structured interview schedule.

Table 1 Exemplar Studies

Phase of research when a second
Research topic Research methods method introduced

1. A cross-sectional study of A schools-based survey of 11– Research design phase: survey

children’s concepts of care 12 year olds; an interview provides extensive data and
and experience of different study with sub-groups of contextualizes interview study;
kinds of family structures children in different family survey provides samples for
conducted in 2 Local types drawn from the survey interview study
Authorities
2. A longitudinal study of An interview study of 256 Fieldwork phase: qualitative element
first-time mothers returning mothers interviewed on fouradded to interview to provide holistic
to work after maternity leave occasions including structured
framework for understanding
conducted in Greater questions and an in-depth meanings and actions and to provide
London interviewing approach opportunity for narratives grounded
in women’s experiences
3. A cross-sectional study of Focus groups and interviews Analysis phase: national quantitative
young people’s views of the with young people (selected on data assists interpretation of
future conducted in the UK, basis of gender, education/ qualitative data
Portugal, Ireland, Sweden training and occupational
and Norway status) and national
quantitative data
178 J. Brannen
Each phase had a particular aim and addressed different research questions and
concerns. Moreover it was also the case that the second (qualitative) phase depended
upon the first (quantitative) phase: The interview cases were embedded within school-
based surveys located in particular social milieux which we also sought to describe. The
surveys therefore provided contextual information about the populations of children
who had been selected. Where a study is being conducted with a two-stage design, the
contextualization provided in the first stage can be very helpful.
The survey provided a sampling frame for the interview studies conducted with
children and their parents in different types of family structure. Gaining access to
children via schools was essential to reaching particular family sub-groups for the
interview study. (The questionnaires were not anonymized but contained codes linked
to children’s names; this enabled us later to identify and contact the groups we wished
to select for the interviews.) Access required careful negotiation with schools but also
some reciprocity on the researchers’ part. By providing schools with quantitative data
drawn from the questionnaire survey phase relating to each school, we hoped to gain
access to the qualitative sample. The questionnaire surveys were therefore designed
with this additional purpose in mind.
The case to be made for attaching qualitative sub-samples to statistically derived
samples such as national cohort studies is a further variant of mixed method designs.
Such designs may benefit quantitative researchers through achieving a better handle
upon the meanings of underlying statistical associations, while it gives qualitative
researchers the chance to select particular cases, to draw upon contextual information
from the wider study and to test hypotheses on large, statistically representative
samples (Thompson, 2004).

The Fieldwork Phase

Different research methods may be incorporated during the fieldwork phase rather
than in the design phase, with one method encompassing more than one type of
approach. The exemplar study of the latter concerns a longitudinal study of women’s
return to employment following maternity leave carried out during the 1980s
(Brannen & Moss, 1991) (Table 1). The study was initially conceptualized in quantita-
tive terms to examine the ‘effects’ of maternal employment upon women and children.
The impetus for the methodological changes we made was both theoretical and politi-
cal. The study stretched over a six-year period allowing considerable scope in time and
material resource terms for the development of concepts and methodologies that were
not articulated in the original research proposal. It was carried out in the 1980s, a
period when funders were more generous in terms of project length. The study was
moreover funded by the UK’s Department of Health, which provided considerable
support to researchers for methodological development.
In this study, an important conceptual shift took place, away from a focus upon
outcomes and to a focus upon meaning and upon the household: how mothers made
sense of their situations and responsibilities and the ways in which they and their
households (the children’s fathers) actively organized and construed employment and
 International Journal of Social Research Methodology 179
parenthood. This change in conceptual perspective translated into a change in the
study’s method of interviewing, with a new set of aims that underpinned the collection
of qualitative as well as quantitative data. The result was an interview schedule that
combined structured questions (the responses to which were categorized according to
predefined codes) with open-ended questions giving scope for probing (responses were
transcribed and analysed qualitatively). We remained committed to collecting the
structured data originally promised but required the interviewers to collect such data
while seeming to adopt a flexible, in-depth mode of interviewing. Indeed this
combined interviewing approach was so successful that, in one of the later waves of the
longitudinal study when, for resource reasons, we decided to collect only quantitative
data, we found the interviewees reluctant to comply; they continued to respond in the
way they had done in the earlier semi-structured interviews.
These changes were well made in that they represented the experiences of the
mothers in all their complexity and ambiguity. The return to full-time employment in
children’s early years was unusual in Britain in the early 1980s, with the dominant
ideology still favouring full-time motherhood (Brannen & Moss, 1991). Many mothers
therefore experienced ambivalent feelings about returning to work in that context as
well as being subject to the conflicting practical demands of home and work. The devel-
opment of a methodology that allowed for the expression of contradictory views and
feelings was therefore an important development in this study: The responses women
gave to single closed questions differed from narratives embedded in their experiences.
These different types of data illuminated moreover broader theoretical concerns and
served to confront the contradictions in, and to highlight, the fragmented and multi-
faceted nature of human consciousness. We wrote about ‘the inter-penetration of
ideology and practice … the mechanisms by which women reproduce and integrate
contradictory elements of their beliefs, actions and the situations in which they find
themselves … beliefs and practices … [which are] part and parcel of larger ideological
debates concerning gender roles and the practice of everyday life’ (p. 7).
Attending to how particular findings are generated by different methods is therefore
a fruitful strategy in making sense of data. Another example from this study concerns
the sharing of childcare in the household. We noted how women often retracted nega-
tive comments about their partners or balanced them with commendations in response
to direct questions. We wrote: ‘Examination of the qualitative analysis of women’s
comments suggested a more complex conclusion. In many cases a good deal of criti-
cism or ambivalence (about husbands) was expressed, especially when women
recounted particular incidents. Critical comments, however, were often retracted or
qualified in response to direct global questions concerning satisfaction with husbands’
participation … the strategy [we] adopted was to examine the contexts in which
women’s responses were located, together with a content analysis of responses. In this
way the contradictions were confronted, and the processes identified by which dissat-
isfaction was played down or explained away’ (Brannen & Moss, 1991, p. 20).
In writing up the study data, we commented upon different ways of combining
qualitative and quantitative data. In general we rarely sought to corroborate qualitative
results through reference to the quantitative data. Rather we analysed the data sets in
180 J. Brannen
relation to the particular research questions underpinning each, while also being
attentive to the context of informants’ responses, namely the questions the interviewers
posed to them. Typically we found that the two types of data analysis were broadly
complementary, providing different kinds of insights into the different aspects of the
social phenomena which constituted our field of interest.
Such a developmental approach had consequences for a research project’s resources.
An organic interviewing approach was employed, requiring increased commitment
and the development of new skills; the interviews took longer, requiring extensive
probing and greater flexibility, concentration and listening skills than originally envis-
aged in the research proposal. It had data processing consequences and more time and
involvement from the senior members of the team. There were other tensions too in
the analysis phase namely between carrying out an analysis across a large number of
cases and carrying out a qualitative, in-depth analysis of a smaller number of selected
cases (Brannen & Moss, 1991). In Britain’s increasingly marketized research world,
such an evolutionary approach to research would be unlikely. However, in so far as
research funders aim to encourage capacity building among researchers, allowing for a
developmental approach within a project’s timetable could be one way whereby
researchers build up a broad spectrum of methodological expertise.

Interpretation and Contextualization

The third phase of the research process in which another type of data may be intro-
duced is the phase of interpretation and contextualization of the findings. Drawing
upon data across the qualitative/quantitative spectrum can take place at all phases of
the research process: shaping the concepts and ideas at the start of the enquiry and
influencing the process of analysis, as well as occurring at the later stage when the
researcher draws conclusions.
Contextualization is particularly important in cross-national research. My example
here is from a study of young people’s views of their future work–family lives, funded
by the European Union and carried out in five countries (Brannen, Nilsen, Lewis, &
Smithson, 2002) (Table 1). In the empirical phase of the study, focus groups and indi-
vidual interviews were carried out with different groups of young people aged 18–30,
selected according to life course phase relating to education, employment status and
occupational level.
It is axiomatic in cross-national studies to be attentive to the social science concepts
which the different country research teams draw upon and how these play out meth-
odologically—in terms of how informants make sense of concepts and how researchers
translate and interpret them in practice. For such processes of ‘translation’ in cross-
national research are likely unwittingly to reflect rather than reveal the characteristics
of the contexts researchers seek to study. There is in short a danger of ‘insider bias’
(Hantrais, forthcoming).
Thus in this study, the ways in which the focus group moderators framed the
questions on the fieldwork guide and the way respondents interpreted them reflected
dominant normative and cultural assumptions, in this case concerning the history of
 International Journal of Social Research Methodology 181
maternal employment and childcare in the different countries (Smithson & Brannen,
2002). Differences later emerged in the ways in which the questions had been put by
moderators to young people about combining work and family in the future (ibid.). In
order to make sense of these differences and the assumptions they revealed we (the UK
team) were reliant to some considerable extent upon the contextual knowledge gained
from our own understandings and in respect of other countries on those of our
colleagues. We were also reliant upon national official statistics while qualitative stud-
ies conducted in particular countries were rarely available to us in translation (none of
us spoke the languages of all the countries in the study).
Some variation in the way moderators ask questions is allowed in the focus group
method. Moreover in some cases we did not do all the moderation ourselves. In analys-
ing some of the focus group material across the five countries, we were struck by how
the questions about parents’ employment were posed differently depending on the
context (Smithson & Brannen, 2002). For example, in the UK focus groups, the ques-
tion was typically posed thus: ‘Can you see yourself giving up work when you had a
child? Would you carry on working when your children were young?’ Posing the ques-
tion thus allowed young people to respond in terms of their ‘personal choices’, which
has been the leitmotiv of much British public policy in recent years. It suggested to
young people that there may be alternatives, reflecting current UK public policy
changes and practices concerning the escalating employment of mothers over the
1990s, especially the employment of mothers with young children. This framing
contrasted with that of the moderator in Ireland who made strongly gendered assump-
tions about full-time motherhood (the norm in Ireland at the time, albeit change was
beginning to happen): ‘Some people would say that a pre-school child would suffer if
his/her mother [our emphasis] was employed and others would say it made no differ-
ence?’ Here the Irish moderator introduced the possibility of negative effects upon chil-
dren—signified in the words ‘child would suffer’.
The sociologists in the team were particularly mindful of the tendency in much
current qualitative enquiry to place undue emphasis upon discourse and the subjectivity
of respondents. This danger was to some extent minimized by the study’s research
design: Young people were selected on the basis of age, educational level and occupa-
tional status. However, during the course of the focus groups we found little reference
by young people to the structural context and the constraints upon their lives. For exam-
ple, young Norwegians university students displayed what we termed a ‘confident plan-
ning mentality’ about their future lives as parents and workers but failed to suggest how
such feelings of mastery and independence were premised upon the support of a strong
welfare state in Norway (Brannen & Nilsen, 2002). It was therefore important to reveal
the link between the individual’s sense of agency within the structural context and to
inject this into the interpretation of the focus group data in the analysis and writing up.

Conclusion
A multi-method strategy may enter into one or more phases of the research process:
the research design; data collection; and interpretation and contextualization of data. I
182 J. Brannen
have argued that in understanding the practice and value of working qualitatively and
quantitatively it is necessary to distinguish between the context in which researchers
design research for particular purposes and frame particular questions, from the
context in which they make sense of their data and recontextualize them in relation to
ontological, epistemological and theoretical assumptions. The paper has given some
examples of research in which different methods were chosen to address different
aspects of the research design and different research questions. It has also indicated
how research designs require us to find particular groups and how a quantitative
sample may lead to the identification of relevant groups for in-depth study. Reference
was made to linking a qualitative sample to statistically representative samples and the
advantages for different parties. Disadvantages may also accrue as when a nationally
representative sample does not generate the groups that qualitative researchers wish to
access (and who may be difficult to reach via a survey).
The paper has also suggested that a fieldwork method may include a quantitative
approach so that data on particular items are collected systematically; some questions
on the interview schedule discussed were treated quantitatively (for example on behav-
iour and practices) while others had a qualitative character. An interviewing approach
which allows interviewers to probe and the interviewees to give narratives of incidents
and experiences is likely to result in a more holistic picture of people’s understandings
than a conventional survey analysis would provide and elucidate the meanings that
research participants attribute to their practices and actions.
The paper has also discussed contextualization and interpretation as a separate phase
of the research process and as a phase that informs other phases. Contextualization is
a critical part of a multi-method strategy in creating and making sense of data. In meth-
odological texts there is surprisingly little attention given to the issue. Indeed it is only
when the issue of working cross-nationally is addressed that contextualization deserves
separate attention (Hantrais, 1999) and is addressed explicitly: in terms of the develop-
ment of research instruments and question wording and in the interpretation of
people’s responses in a given national context. It may well be that it is ignored because
of its compartmentalization as reviews of official statistics and the literature. Until the
arrival of systematic reviews, literature reviews did not routinely require methodolog-
ical discussion. The paper has moreover noted that qualitative analysis in its emphasis
upon the textual may be rather weak in contextualization, that is in making sense of
data in relation to structural contexts and particular historical moments. At worst,
quotes from informants are sometimes presented in the written outputs of studies with-
out reference to context, so that meaning is often narrowly interpreted to refer to actors’
own interpretations. Thus agency may be attributed to actors without reference to the
resources that are available to them. In this way there is a risk that we may fail to make
the classic sociological link between the individual and society (Nilsen & Brannen,
2002; Brannen & Nilsen, forthcoming).
To conclude, the aim of methodology is to help us to understand, in the broadest
possible terms, not only the products of scientific enquiry but the process itself
(Kaplan, 1964, p. 23). A multi-method strategy should be adopted to serve particular
theoretical, methodological and practical purposes. Such a strategy is not a tool kit or
 International Journal of Social Research Methodology 183
a technical fix. Nor should it be seen as a belt and braces approach. Multi-method
research is not necessarily better research. Rather it is an approach employed to address
the variety of questions posed in a research investigation that, with further framing,
may lead to the use of a range of methods. However, the resulting data need to be
analysed and interpreted in relation to those methods and according to the
assumptions by which they are generated.

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