03 · What You Need to Know
Why Pragmatism Became Closely Associated With Mixed Methods
The Association Emerged From a Real Philosophical Problem
Mixed-methods research developed against a background of debates sometimes called the paradigm wars.
One side of the debate associated quantitative methods with positivist or postpositivist assumptions. Another associated qualitative methods with constructivist or interpretivist assumptions. If those paradigms were philosophically incompatible and methods belonged permanently to them, combining quantitative and qualitative approaches could appear incoherent.
Mixed-methods researchers challenged that restriction.
Pragmatism became particularly attractive because it allowed researchers to focus on inquiry, research purposes, experience, and consequences rather than assuming that methods inherited immutable philosophical commitments from the traditions in which they had often been used.
Pragmatism Helps Break the One-Paradigm-One-Method Assumption
Pragmatism rejects a deterministic relationship between paradigms and methods.
Morgan argues directly that although certain paradigms and methods may have affinities, no deterministic connection forces qualitative methods to constructivism, quantitative methods to postpositivism, or mixed methods to pragmatism. Pragmatism can provide a philosophical framework for qualitative, quantitative, or mixed research.
This point is easily overlooked.
If pragmatism does not require mixed methods, mixed methods cannot logically be defined by pragmatism either.
Mixed-methods research
A methodological approach in which quantitative and qualitative research components are intentionally combined and integrated to address a research problem.
Pragmatism
A philosophical tradition emphasizing inquiry, experience, action, purposes, and consequences that can support methodological pluralism.
Mixed Methods Is Not Itself Necessarily a Paradigm
Some scholars have proposed mixed methods as a distinct research paradigm. Others distinguish the methodological approach from the philosophical paradigms that can underpin it.
Mertens argues against treating quantitative, qualitative, and mixed methods as paradigms simply because they represent methodological approaches. In her account, mixed methods can be conducted within different philosophical stances, including pragmatism, transformative inquiry, and dialectical pluralism.
This distinction matters because calling "mixed methods" your paradigm does not necessarily explain your assumptions about reality, knowledge, values, or integration.
Why Does Pragmatism Fit Mixed Methods So Well?
Mixed-methods research often begins with a problem that cannot be addressed adequately through one form of evidence.
Suppose researchers evaluate an online learning intervention. Quantitative data can estimate whether student performance changed and for whom. Interviews can reveal how students experienced the intervention and why implementation succeeded or failed in particular settings.
A pragmatic researcher can ask what each form of evidence contributes to resolving the inquiry.
Recent methodological work continues to describe pragmatism as particularly suited to mixed methods because it values methods according to their contribution to the problem rather than according to rigid methodological hierarchies. Importantly, this flexibility does not imply that differences among methods should be ignored.
Pragmatism Does Not Mean "Use Whatever Methods You Want"
The common phrase "whatever works" can make pragmatic mixed methods sound methodologically permissive.
But a researcher still needs to explain why mixing is necessary.
Why is quantitative evidence insufficient by itself? Why is qualitative evidence insufficient? What does each component contribute? At what stage are they connected? What happens if they disagree? How does integration produce an inference that neither component could support independently?
Without answers to these questions, pragmatism can become a label used to avoid philosophical reasoning rather than a philosophical justification for integration.
Mixed Methods Can Use a Transformative Paradigm
A transformative paradigm offers one important alternative.
Transformative mixed-methods research explicitly centers concerns such as power, social justice, human rights, marginalization, cultural responsiveness, and social change.
Quantitative evidence might document the magnitude or distribution of inequity. Qualitative evidence might illuminate how institutional processes produce it and how marginalized communities experience those processes. Participatory components may influence how the problem, methods, interpretation, and dissemination are developed.
The philosophical rationale for mixing is therefore not merely that multiple methods are practically useful. Integration serves a transformative purpose.
Mertens identifies the transformative paradigm as one of the major philosophical stances available to mixed-methods researchers rather than treating pragmatism as mandatory.
Mixed Methods Can Use a Dialectical Stance
Another alternative is a dialectical approach.
Instead of resolving philosophical differences by placing the entire study under one overarching paradigm, a dialectical stance can deliberately bring different paradigmatic perspectives into conversation.
For example, the quantitative component might operate from postpositivist assumptions while the qualitative component operates from constructivist assumptions. Rather than pretending the differences disappear, the researcher examines convergence, contradiction, and tension between the perspectives.
Mertens describes dialectical pluralism as welcoming more than one paradigmatic tradition into the same inquiry and engaging those traditions in dialogue throughout the research process.
This approach can be intellectually productive, but it also creates work. Researchers must understand the paradigms well enough to explain what is being brought into dialogue and why their tensions are informative rather than merely ignored.
Mixed Methods Can Be Critical Realist
Critical realism can also provide a coherent foundation for combining methods.
Critical realist research seeks explanations of observable events through underlying structures, generative mechanisms, and contextual conditions.
Quantitative evidence can identify patterns requiring explanation. Qualitative evidence can illuminate processes and contexts through which mechanisms may operate. Documentary, historical, or institutional evidence can contribute information about relevant structures.
Integration is therefore justified through the explanatory task.
A researcher might discover quantitatively that an intervention works in some schools but not others, then use qualitative evidence to investigate which mechanisms are activated under which contextual conditions.
The philosophical rationale is critical realist rather than pragmatic, even though both approaches can endorse methodological pluralism.
Other Philosophical Combinations Are Possible
Mixed-methods scholarship contains considerable philosophical diversity.
Researchers have proposed combinations and pluralist positions that do not fit comfortably under one of the most familiar labels. Contemporary scholarship continues to develop hybrid frameworks, including attempts to combine critical realist and pragmatic commitments.
This diversity should not be interpreted as permission to invent a philosophical combination casually.
Combining perspectives requires examining whether their assumptions conflict, whether those conflicts can be reconciled, whether they can coexist at different levels of the study, or whether the tensions themselves are analytically productive.
What Is Actually Being Mixed?
This question is more important than it first appears.
Mixed methods can involve several different kinds of combination:
- different forms of data;
- different data-generation methods;
- different analytical procedures;
- different forms of inference;
- different theoretical perspectives; or
- potentially different epistemological assumptions.
Biesta argues that discussions of pragmatism and mixed methods can become confused when researchers do not distinguish what is actually being mixed. He suggests that a particularly consequential distinction concerns whether research seeks causal explanation or interpretive understanding, rather than merely whether the data happen to be quantitative or qualitative.
This is a useful warning against treating all mixing as philosophically equivalent.
Combining Data Is Not Yet Integration
A study does not become philosophically coherent simply because researchers administer a survey and conduct interviews.
Mixed-methods research requires purposeful integration.
Quantitative results might inform qualitative sampling. Qualitative findings might explain unexpected statistical results. Both components might be merged during interpretation. One dataset might help build an instrument for another phase.
The philosophical framework should help explain why those connections produce meaningful knowledge.
If the two components remain independent until they are placed beside each other in the discussion section, the study may be multimethod rather than strongly integrated mixed methods, depending on the methodological definition being used.
Pragmatism Does Not Automatically Solve Paradigmatic Incompatibility
Sometimes researchers write that they use pragmatism "to overcome paradigm incompatibility" and consider the philosophical issue settled.
That is too quick.
Pragmatism offers one way of reframing the problem by rejecting deterministic method-paradigm pairings and emphasizing inquiry. But researchers still need to understand what assumptions their methods and interpretations actually involve.
If one component assumes categories represent stable features of an external reality while another argues that those same categories are produced through discourse, simply labeling the overall study pragmatic does not automatically resolve the conceptual tension.
This is why the separate issue of paradigmatic compatibility remains important.
The Research Question Should Drive the Need for Mixing
A mixed-methods study should normally exist because the research problem benefits from integration, not because mixed methods sounds more comprehensive.
If a well-designed quantitative study can answer the question fully, adding interviews may create unnecessary work without improving the inference.
If a qualitative study can provide the contextual understanding the question requires, adding a questionnaire does not automatically make the research stronger.
Pragmatism can support methodological flexibility, but it does not require methodological maximalism.
The strongest mixed-methods designs make clear what each component contributes and why integration produces additional insight.
Different Paradigms Justify Mixing for Different Reasons
| Philosophical stance |
Why different methods might be combined |
Typical emphasis |
| Pragmatism |
Different forms of evidence contribute to addressing the research problem and purposes of inquiry. |
Inquiry, usefulness, experience, action, and consequences. |
| Transformative |
Different forms of evidence illuminate inequality, marginalized perspectives, power, and possibilities for change. |
Social justice, human rights, cultural responsiveness, and transformation. |
| Dialectical pluralism |
Different paradigmatic perspectives are intentionally placed in dialogue to examine convergence and tension. |
Pluralism, contradiction, dialogue, and multiple perspectives. |
| Critical realism |
Different evidence contributes to explaining patterns, contexts, structures, and generative mechanisms. |
Causal explanation, mechanisms, context, and stratified reality. |
These are not the only possibilities, nor does every mixed-methods study fit perfectly within one row. The comparison illustrates why "mixed methods = pragmatism" is too restrictive.
You Do Not Need to Reject Pragmatism Merely Because Alternatives Exist
There is a danger of overcorrecting.
Pragmatism remains a highly influential and often very coherent philosophical foundation for mixed-methods research. Its emphasis on inquiry and its rejection of rigid method-paradigm ownership address real methodological problems.
If your research genuinely reflects pragmatic assumptions, there is no reason to avoid the paradigm simply because it is common.
The problem occurs when researchers choose pragmatism automatically after deciding to collect two kinds of data and then provide no philosophical justification beyond "mixed methods uses pragmatism."
Watch Out
Do not select pragmatism by default merely because your study contains quantitative and qualitative components. First determine why the methods need to be integrated and what philosophical assumptions make that integration coherent.
