The Usage of Mixed Methods within Public Administration Doctoral Dissertations
Dr. Najwa Mordhah

Abstract
This study aims to answer these questions: How didpublic administration doctoral students combine qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct their dissertations? Which type of integration methods (simultaneous or sequential) are commonly used in public administration doctoral dissertations that employ mixed methods? Do they articulate the purpose of using that particular type of mixed methods? Is it easy to explicitly or implicitly acquire the type of mixed methods or not (clarity)? The study aims to understand the topic gradually starting from 2007 to 2011 and in doing so, this paper reviews fifty public administration doctoral mixed methods dissertations through 2011 to 2007..According to the finding, the percentage of dissertations that apply mixed methods approach is 3.3% of the total number of the dissertations in public administration which is 2,844 dissertations; 86% of those dissertations implement sequential mixed methods, while only 14% use simultaneous mixed methods type. Some researchers articulated the type of mixed methods clearly and the purpose which reflect their deep understanding of the methodology. However, the percentage of them is not high: 60% for the purpose and 62% for the clarity. The concept of mixed method began being used after 2005, yet, the study is limited to public administration doctoral dissertations that have been published during 2007- 2011 to chase the progress of using this type of research method intensively and comprehensively. Consequently, more studies are needed to investigate the same questions of this study on a sample of dissertations under the same criteria but in different contexts such as a period of time (after 2011) or different cultures and then compare the results. Also, this study could open a window for more comparison of research methods between public and business administration. The field of public administration is related to other social sciences uch as politics, economics, public law and public finance. It is also close to business administration, but it differs greatly according to objectives and means. Because of these narrow views of public administration, some people believe that public administration is a tool to apply public policy, which is also related to the economic system. Perhaps more importantly public administration has been an active and ongoing area of inquiry and controversy since its birth and faces many challenges about its legitimacy as a fully developed discipline of study. These conflicts and debates have risen over the relevancy of the diverse epistemic and methodological traditions to provide an unanswered question: which type of methods serves the study of the field effectively? Some scholars believe there is no best way to conduct public administration research. This belief is illustrated by examining the intellectual history and identity of the field of public administration through its diverse research traditions and current accomplishments (Ruccuci, 2010). Others, however, strongly suggest using mixed methods approach, which has emerged as a third paradigm for social research. Some scholars see mixed methods as “… a platform of ideas and practices that are credible and distinctive and that mark the approach out as a viable alternative to quantitative and qualitative paradigms” (Denscombe, 2008, p.270). Other researchers go on to see this approach of social inquiry as an important compromise to “…the contemporary debate about what constitutes valid, rigorous, and „scientific' research” (Greene,2005, p.207). Östlund, Kidd, Wengström and Rowa-Dewar (2011) think the integration of qualitative and quantitative approaches cause much debate and there is an essential need for a rigorous framework for designing and interpreting mixed methods research. They state that there is a lack of pragmatic guidance in the research literature as how to combine qualitative and quantitative approaches and how to integrate qualitative and quantitative findings. Here, this paper aims to explore the usage of mixed methods within public administration doctoral dissertations and to chase the progress of using this type of research method intensively and comprehensively. The paper investigates and answers these questions: How do public administration doctoral students combine qualitative and quantitative methods to conduct their dissertations? Which type of integration methods (simultaneous or sequential) are commonly used in public administration doctoral dissertations that employ mixed methods? Do they articulate the purpose of using that particular type of mixed methods? Is it easy to explicitly or implicitly acquire the type of mixed methods or not (clarity)? There are few studies that examine the usage of mixed methods through bunch of research in one discipline. However, two studies were found that reflect that concept which are Östlund et al. (2011) and Truscott, Swars, Smith, Thornton-Reid and Zhao(2010). The Östlund‟s et al. (2011) study investigates the analytical approaches used in mixed methods in healthcare research. It aims to demonstrate the use of triangulation as a methodological metaphor for drawing conclusions from qualitative and quantitative findings. The study examines 168 studies, which mostly originated in the United States of America, the United Kingdom and Canada. The study concludes that parallel data analysis was the most widely used approach. While a number of studies used sequential data analysis, fewer studies employed concurrent data analysis. Ostlund‟s et al. study also reveals that the purpose of using a mixed methods design is rarely articulated. Additionally, Truscot et al (2010) examines the occurrence of mixed methods research published in 11prominent English-language international and U.S. national educational research journals from 1995 to 2005. 2,381 studies were reviewed by research teams in four educational disciplines: literacy, mathematics, social studies, and science. However, 332 (14%) of the articles examined were identified as using mixed methods. Results suggest little variation across disciplines and years in the number of studies using mixed methods. More importantly, they state that even though mixed methods are a reasonable approach to apply in educational research, it does not seem to be an increasingly popular research method. Although there has been a recent increase of methodological articles, studies, book chapters, and books devoted to mixed methods research to date, there is no chronicled examination for the usage of mixed methods in doctoral dissertations. Thus embedded in this paper is the importance of taking the lead in this area. Moreover, selecting public administration doctoral dissertations to be examined extend the knowledge about how doctoral students deal with data to combine qualitative and quantitative methods and enhance their results. Since public administration is a social science discipline, this study may be considered a beneficial contribution not only in the field of public administration but also the entire social science. In order to conduct the purpose of this investigation, the researcher uses systematic principles in searching for American public administration doctoral dissertations which employed a mixed methods approach and were published in the English language between January 2007 and November 2011. According to the results which are extracted from the library via ProQuest, there are ninety five dissertations that used mixed methods. The researcher, however, selects randomly from each year ten dissertations to end up with fifty dissertations (n=50) (see the Appendix). The researcher aims to apply random assignment by selecting odd numbers (1,3,5,7,..etc.) of dissertations to be examined from each year. However, the study covers most of the dissertations in 2007 since there are eleven dissertations. Each dissertation is reviewed to figure out how mixed methods approach was applied within it. Data are coded and calculated to provide percentages demonstrated within tables and graphs. Here, the primary concern regarding the limitation is that the sample reflects only dissertations that the library via ProQuest provides. Additionally, the limitation of time forced the researcher to rely on fifty dissertations instead of the whole population, which is ninety five. This study is limited to only public administration doctoral dissertations to enhance the researcher‟s knowledge about how other doctoral students use mixed methods in their dissertations. Also, the study is limited to public administration doctoral dissertations that have been published during 2007- 2011. It has to be said that the researcher was planning to study a sample from 2005 to 2020 but it is found that almost no dissertations meet the criteria before 2007. Also, it was hard to cover all the dissertations among 15 years in addition to the fact that having the sample within five years will be more intensive and comprehensive. Finally, this study aims only to investigate three elements which are: types of mixed methods (sequential or simultaneous), purpose and clarity. In this study , while the purpose refers to why the researcher use that particular type of mixed methods, clarity means whether there is a statement reflecting the type of mixed method or how easy to detect the type of mixed methods from the content.

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