Why “merged” methods realize a higher integration than “mixed” methods: a reply

Abstract

Purpose After the initial life (which coincides with the origins of social research in the 1850s, and lasts until 1940s), mixed methods revive at the beginning of 1970s. However, this second life (or renaissance) receives the deleterious imprinting of quantitative methods. In fact, some of the old positivist assumptions are still reproduced and active in most of mixed methods research. This imprinting is traceable in the ambiguity (and purposive semantic stretching) of the term “qualitative”: from the 1990s, it encompasses almost everything (even approaches considered positivistic in the 1950s!). Whereby the semantical extension of the term “qualitative” has become a sort of Trojan horse for a new legitimation of many quantitative and positivist researchers: a great swindle. Today “qualitative” is nonsense and acts as a bug, which muddies the qualitative-quantitative debate. For this reason, it would be better to remove the bug (i.e. to discharge the term “qualitative” from the language of social research and methodology), reset and start over from the level of specific research methods, considering carefully and balancing their diversity before mixing them. The purpose of this paper is to outline two (complementary) ways of integration of methods (“mixed” and “merged”), arguing that “merged” methods realize a higher integration than “mixed” methods, because the former overcome some weaknesses of the latter. Design/methodology/approach A semantic and pragmatic analysis of the term “qualitative.” Findings In social and behavioral sciences, the second life of mixed methods has been heavily affected by old positivist and quantitative assumptions. Research limitations/implications The term “qualitative” should be discharged from the language of social research and methodology. Practical implications The coveted integration in “mixed” methods, could be better pursed through “merged” methods. Social implications Disentangling the strands of a debate (the qualitative-quantitative one) become muddy. Originality/value An alternative framework, to interpret the mixed methods history and their recent developments, has been proposed.