My confusion is that pragmatist paradigm has been the choice for mixed methods study employing both Quant and Qual methods, but if the Qual part is an exploratory study to explore people's perspective about a phenomena and their experience of dealing with it, then can it be approached through interpretivist perspective? Something like interpretivist perspective within a pragmatist paradigm?
Any help would be much appreciated.
Yes. I have tried something similar with the convergent parallel mixed method study. However, you must know which mixed methods design you are using to inform this choice (I mean the aggregate of Quan or Qual in the mixed method design). All the best
In doing mixed methods, the main thing your need is a clear purpose for each of your methods, and an overall research design that allows you to integrate the results effectively. It sounds like your qualitative methods are part of an "exploratory sequential design," where the goal is to help develop the content of the quantitative portion of the project. That is a coherent plan that does not require any reference to a paradigm.
Where you could run into trouble is if you state that you are using an interpretivist paradigm for the qualitative part of your research and a post-positivist paradigm for the quantitative part, because you someone might well argue that those are incompatible.
Personally, I think that worrying about paradigms is no longer an issue in mixed methods research. So, unless you are required to make paradigm statements, I suggest you concentrate instead on your research goals and a design that will meet those goals.
Article Revisiting the Quantitative-Qualitative Debate: Implications...
Article A pragmatic basis for mixed‐method designs
http://nsuworks.nova.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1819&context=tqr/
https://edulll.ekt.gr/edulll/bitstream/10795/2235/2/2235_2%20%20QUANTITY%20QUALITY.pdf
Article Mixed Methods Research: The "Thing-ness" Problem
Article Remaining Open to Quantitative, Qualitative, and Mixed‐Metho...
https://methods.sagepub.com/base/download/BookChapter/sage-handbook-of-mixed-methods-social-behavioral-research-2e/n21.xml
Thank you to everyone for taking out time to answer my question. Much appreciated.
@ Prof Morgan, thank you for explaining it in simple terms for me to understand. After reading your article 'Paradigms lost and Pragmatism gained' and your answer here, my confusion has been cleared up considerably.
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