Editorial

Abstract

The 12th European Conference on Research Methodology for Business and Management Studies (ECRM), was held at the University of Minho, Guimaraes, Portugal in 2013. I chair a Mixed Methods Mini Track within the ECRM conference and was impressed by the standard of the papers that year. This led me to approach the IJMRA to gauge the Editor's interest in a Special Issue with a focus on mixed methods. Some of the papers in this issue where first aired in their adolescent stages at that conference. Although the ECRM has a stated focus on business and management research the ECRM conference attracts researchers from disciplines beyond these fields and this only adds to the diversity of the conference and its papers.The IJMRA has published several Special Issues on Mixed Methods in specific disciplines including: Mixed Methods in the Health Sciences (Vol. 5, Issue 1), Mixed Methods in Business and Management Research (Vol. 5, Issue 3), Mixed Methods in Education (Vol. 6, Issue 3), Mixed Methods Research: Philosophy, Policy and Practice in Education (Vol. 7, Issue 1) and Mixed Methods in Genders dr Sexualities Research (Vol. 7, Issue 2). In addition to these IJMRA has also published Special Issues on Mixed Methods for Novice Researchers (Vol. 3, Issue 1) and Teaching Mixed Methodologies (Vol. 4, Issue 1). This Special Issue extends this tradition by presenting a set of mixed methods papers which cover the disciplines of nursing, health, information systems (IS), public sector procurement, human resource management and project management.The first two papers are health based, one is in nursing practice and the second in relation to perceptions related to the causes and treatment of a specific health disorder in children. The first of these by Siddiqui and Fitzgerald (2014, pp. 137-147) focuses upon on the integration of the qualitative and quantitative perspectives in mixed methods research. They did this by using a study into nursing practice environment to explore how this can be done with different components of the research which they claim enables substantial depth, rationality and inquisitiveness. They do this by differentiating the concept of 'integration' from 'triangulation' and by discussing the benefits of 'elaborative integration' which goes beyond mixing qualitative and quantitative data to one which synthesises the qualitative and quantitative components of a mixed methods study to ensure interdependency of these components. They claim this interdependency is a builtin aspect of mixed methods research through interactions between the two components at different points in the research process, such as during the conceptualisation, theorising as well as the data analysis stage. Siddiqui and Fitzgerald (2014, p. 138) define elaborative integration as 'combining qualitative and quantitative components in depth. That is, reflecting on the interdependent roles of qualitative and quantitative components throughout the stages of conceptualisation of research to interpretation of research findings when rationally possible.' The lack of integration in published mixed methods studies is a common criticism and so this paper is of value to those using mixed methods and provides an example on how to create greater integration between the two approaches.The main contribution of the Fakis, Hilliam, Townend, Stoneley, and Robinson (2014, pp. 148-165) paper to mixed methods research is the description of a novel approach to secondary analysis of qualitative data. The authors refer to this as the Enosis method. Enosis, being the Greek word for, 'union.' The Enosis method has two steps, the first being the quantification of qualitative data using a scoring system and sample size. The second step is the application structural equation modelling (SEM). The authors apply this Enosis approach to qualitative data collected in a previous research study which utilised mixed methods and explored the perceptions of grandmothers and mothers to the causes and treatment of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. …