A Mixed Methods Approach for Identifying Influence on Public Policy

Abstract

Fields from political science to critical education policy studies have long explored power relations in policy processes, showing who influences policy agendas, policy creation, and policy implementation. Yet showing particular actors’ influence on specific points in a policy text remains a methodological challenge. This article presents a five-stage, embedded mixed methods design for establishing influence on educational policy moving from a policy text outward. I use an example analysis of Australia’s policy making on boys’ education—the report Boys: Getting it Right (2002)—to show how data transformation measures, both quantitizing and qualitizing, within a larger qualitative study helped identify influence. This mixed design, I argue, can be useful in other research contexts, with variations for data availability and researcher resources.

Integrating and Consolidating Data in Mixed Methods Data Analysis: Examples From Focus Group Data With Children

“…This short and noncomprehensive review illustrates the limitations of typologies and underlines the call for practical examples. Although some publications reflect on data analysis in mixed methods research on a conceptual level (Bazeley, 2012, 2016; Kerrigan, 2014; Kuckartz, 2017; Sandelowski et al, 2009; Weaver-Hightower, 2014), practical examples for integrating qualitative and quantitative data in mixed methods analysis are comparatively rare—particularly when it comes to more complex forms of analyses (Kelle, 2007; Kuckartz, 2014, 2017; Onwuegbuzie & Hitchcock, 2015; e.g., see Bazeley, 2018).…”

The Education-Industrial Complex: A Consideration of Power, Educational Institution and the Political Disengagement of Urban Secondary Students

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Unfurling the PhD process: A reflexive account of key stages and strategies

“…First, both methods (qualitative and quantitative) are embedded in a hybrid manner within the central design (Luck, Jackson, & Usher, 2006). Second, one method (quantitative or qualitative) is embedded as an additional element to the central design (Hilton, Budgen, Molzahn, & Attridge, 2001;Weaver-Hightower, 2014). An embedded design within a qualitative approach was considered appropriate based on the decision of using mixed methods QUAL-quan.…”