In my study along with 6 interviews, i have taken a sample of 232 respondents. is it enough for the mixed method (case study and questionnaire) study?
It depends on your scope, i.e how do you intend to interpret the answers. If you intend, for example, to look at the effect of sex (2 groups) age( e.g. 6 groups), income (e.g. 5 groups) and education (e.g. 3 groups) you will have to split your population into 2x6x5x3= 180 groups, leaving ve3ry few respondent in each group.
Assuming that your respondents are representative of the population you are interested in, you should not have less than 7 respondent per sub group to get conclusions that have some chance to be correct!.
1. For the questionnaire it really depends on how many variables you are testing and then how many items to be answered on the questionnaire. If you have say 23 items and 232 respondents and you are only looking at difference tests for say gender then yes it is enough. However like the answer above, if you comprehensively want to analyse the data for many variables then you may require more questionnaires.
2. You need to explain how the interview data complements or fits within the framework of the hypotheses (research questions) that you are answering. If your interviews are focussing on a feature of interest derived from the questionnaire results then 5+ is enough as long as you have enough qualitative data (and that is very rich) to work from re the feature of interest etc.
To address your question, I would need to know more about your research design and your research goals. In particular, what is the connection between your qualitative data and your qualitative data -- what purpose does each serve within your overall research project?
Dear Ruchi
1. Regarding the sample size of the survey. Claude-Alain and Michelle have already given you a very good orientation. It depends heavily on factors such as population variability, number of variables to be analyzed, size of the effect to be detected, type of variables to be used and your admissible error. However I have read many papers with similar sample sizes to yours.
2. Regarding the qualitative sample. In general 6 individuals I find a small sample. It is impossible to determine the size of the qualitative sample a priori. It is necessary to dive into the field and get to what is called the saturation point. That is the point from which you can no longer establish new categories. Personally, in my projects I have always gotten the saturation point from 15 interviews or more.
Greetings,
Jorge
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