Understanding Integration Via a Kaleidoscope Metaphor

Abstract

Although Mixed Method Research has been credited for extending an olive branch to broker a ceasefire between proponents of the quantitative and qualitative research paradigms, it continues to be criticized for subscribing to methodological orthodoxy, methodolatry, and showing discomfort with difference, contradictions, paradoxes, uncertainty, discontinuities, and so forth. Furthermore, the tendency to delay the integration of qualitative and quantitative data until the analysis stage has led to mixed method researchers exploring (Fully) Integrated Mixed Methods Research (FIMMR). To provide an example of FIMMR, this chapter draws on the SCRATCHMAPS (Spiritual Capacity and Religious Assets for Transforming Community Health by Mobilizing Males for Peace and Safety) case study to respond to the challenge to integrate qualitative and quantitative research in a critically reflexive way throughout the research process. Located in a low-income community in Cape Town, South Africa, the SCRATCHMAPS project was guided by the tenets of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR). The study sought to address the challenges of violence in general, and the involvement of men as perpetrators and victims of violence, in particular. This chapter recruits the kaleidoscope as a metaphorical depiction to reflect on the SCRATCHMAPS project as a FIMMR study. Steering away from a dichotomous logic to conducting mixed methods research, to a More than research approach, the chapter illustrates how the SCRATCHMAPS project strived for integration at the research design, theoretical framing, research planning, intervention, implementation, evaluation, and dissemination and sustainability levels.