I’ve seen it complained on social media that a Phd is really mostly 5 years of reading. There is no questions a graduate education requires an enormous investment in reading. For those interested in mixed method research (MMR), there’s first the question of what to read to get a balanced overview of the field. For someone wanting to stake a claim as methodologist in MMR, there’s the challenge of whittling down a niche specialized enough to master the literature about it. With what is now almost 25 years of accumulation, it is no longer possible to read everything, even everything notable, written about MMR.

Trying to get a sense of all the literature about MMR is akin to embracing a very large, very much alive, octopus

Getting an overview of MMR and the diverse ways its been approached is not as daunting a task at it first seems. I can be achieved by reading a few highly cited articles in each of these domains: (1) design, (2) philosophy or paradigm, (3) integration, and (4) complexity. The next step begins the process of narrowing the scope of the literature to your areas of interest. That’s when to turn to to a textbook to get more depth on a topic like integration.

Developing an area of expertise is an act of drawing a circle, albeit a permeable one, around an even narrower body of literature and the dozen or less people actively producing scholarship about it. In mixed methods, the topic of joint displays is an example where it is possible to identify a small group of people actively contributing to the literature.

The exciting thing about having an expertise is that you begin to know the people writing about it and to have the opportunity to give feedback about early versions of a manuscripts. You communicate with them, including by sharing draft manuscripts. When expertise is defined clearly enough, it is easy to spot a new idea and to recognize when you have an idea that is new to the field.

Related You Tubes: Framing Your Contribution https://atomic-temporary-202627754.wpcomstaging.com/w79g