ABSTRACT
An old Italian proverb reads, “What's old is new, what's new is old” (Melfi, 2011). This quote could be used to characterize the story of mixed methods in the research community in that mixed methods have been used by researchers for many years, but attention to the specifics of mixed methods research is relatively new. Many researchers intuitively came to the conclusion that research on complex social issues can be enhanced by the use of multiple methods; hence the combination of both quantitative and qualitative data in the same studies is nothing new. Even the pioneer constructivists, Lincoln and Guba (1985) did not exclude the use of quantitative data in qualitative research designs, with the caveat that the constructivist philosophical assumptions were not violated. While some might interpret Lincoln and Guba's position to mean that mixed methods are legitimate, this caveat does raise some thorny issues for researchers. Is the mixing of paradigms possible or desirable? Are there paradigms that are amenable to exploring the meaning of mixed methods? The exploration of answers to these questions provides the basis for the qualitative touchstones discussed in this chapter.
