Social work PhD: fixing a mixed methods design that was really two studies
Renee, 36 | PhD in Social Work | Private R1, Mid-Atlantic
The challenge
My committee said I had written two studies and called it mixed methods. I could not point to a single place where the strands met.
What we changed
- We specified two integration points: phase two sampling drawn from phase one latent classes, and a joint display in Chapter 4.
- The joint display table used findings as rows and convergence or divergence as an explicit column.
- Chapter 3 was rewritten with Creswell and Plano Clark notation so priority and timing were unambiguous.
The outcome
Approved on resubmission. The joint display was the first thing two committee members praised.
Integration was one table and two sentences in Chapter 3. That was the whole difference.