Qualitative and Quantitative Are Data Types Not Paradigms: An MMA Framework for Mixed Research in Applied Linguistics

Mixed methods research, or mixed research, is an area with a great deal of promise for applied linguistics, especially given the field's diverse range of topics and methods. However, when mixed research mixes qualitative and qualitative methods, this can be problematic as researchers suppose this implies mixing mutually exclusive 'quantitative' and 'qualitative' paradigms. This paper argues that these problems arise from the identification of paradigms as qualitative or qualitative. It explores how mixed research might be conducted from a single paradigm. Finally, it offers a novel framework for mixed research which allows for a finer grained and less problematic description of mixed research.