The Craft Attitude: Navigating Mess in Mixed Methods Research

Abstract

Acknowledging and navigating “mess” are clear priorities in the mixed methods literature. Mess enters the mixed methods process in two interrelated ways. The first is empirically, where quantitative and qualitative findings diverge or contrast rather than cohere; the second is through design, where research contexts demand unplanned adaptation. This article outlines three practices that help mixed methods researchers recognize and navigate both kinds of mess, collectively called the “craft attitude.” The craft attitude consists of comfort with uncertainty, a nonlinear/recursive approach to research, and understanding research as storytelling. I further argue these components can orient researchers to mess in both structured and flexible ways by fostering three intellectual activities: science, craft/art, and ethical value judgment. This article contributes to the field of mixed methods by offering a practice-oriented concept facilitating the collective acknowledgement and engagement of mess, rather than concealing it in our research.

Integrative Strategies in Mixed Methods Research

“…In terms of integration, this raises the question of whether differences are permitted when handling the data and what meanings are given to differing observations. In addition to contrasting empirical findings, according to Sanscartier (2020), there can be a design-related ''mess'' in mixed methods research. This mess is due to the context dependency of the mixed methods research process; research contexts and objects can present unforeseen challenges and diversities, which call for unplanned adaptation and fluidity of research designs.…”

“…This mess is due to the context dependency of the mixed methods research process; research contexts and objects can present unforeseen challenges and diversities, which call for unplanned adaptation and fluidity of research designs. Sanscartier (2020) suggests that both empirical and design-related messes can be navigated with planned or evolutionary adaptation, openness to messiness, and a pragmatic and reflective orientation toward it.…”

In This Issue: Introducing Virtual Special Issues, Advances in Paradigms, Mixed Methods Crossover Analysis, and Social Network Analysis in Mixed Methods Research

“…In the third methodological/theoretical article, Sanscartier (2020) with affiliations in sociology and anthropology introduces the concept of the “craft attitude” into mixed methods research. Sanscartier frames the mess of mixed methods research to come from two sources, namely, situations when quantitative and qualitative findings lack coherence and diverge, conflict, or contrast with each other, and when the research context calls for unanticipated adaptation.…”

Populist Counterpublics: Exploring Populist Mobilization, Crises of Representation, and Popular Subjectivities in Canadian Politics

“…Importantly, these realities are not mutually exclusive. As scholars of mixed methods have shown time and again, there can be a structural or processual reality consisting of some "real" mechanism outside the lived experience/realities of those in its workings, and reality can be radically different for people with varying standpoints in those mechanisms (Freshwater & Fisher, 2014;Harrits, 2011;Johnson, 2017;Maxwell, 2016;Sanscartier, 2020). The tricky part, of course, is building research designs capable of taking both senses of reality into account-both a broader structural reality, and the lived realities that affect and are affected by that broader reality.…”

“…For many constructivist scholars, the term "triangulation" has poor connotations-certainly, the distrust of this term is not unjustified. Triangulation has often been used by scholars to bastardize qualitative methods from a constructivist ontology or epistemology, using it to support quantitative methods seen as generalizable, nomothetic, and altogether more insightful (Given, 2017;Sanscartier, 2017aSanscartier, , 2020. However, qualitative scholars have explored how triangulation can be used in post-positivist and interpretive research designs.…”